Upper or Supper Room

The early Church prayed in the upper room, the twentieth century Church cooks in the supper room.

Today the supper room has taken the place of the upper  room.  Pay has taken the place of prayer, and feasting the place of fasting.  There are more full stomachs than there are bended knees and broken hearts.  There is more fire in the range in the kitchen, than there is in the pulpit.  When you build a fire in the church kitchen, it often, if not altogether, puts out the fire in the pulpit.  Ice cream chills the fervor of spiritual life.

The early Christians were not cooking in the supper room the day the Holy Ghost came, they were praying in the upper room.  They were not waiting on tables, they were waiting on God.  They were detained by the command of God, and not entertained by the cunning of men.  They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, not stuffed with a stew or roast.

Oh, I would like the cooking squad put out, and the praying band put in; less pie, and more piety; less use for the cookbook, and more use for the old Book.  Putout the fire in the kitchen and build it  on the altar.  More love and more life, fewer dinners and get after sinners.  Let us have a church full of waiters on God, a church full of servers, serving God and waiting for His Son from heaven.

(excerpt from Illustrations for Church Service by Walter B. Knight)