Originally Posted by Freedom
On two different sections of the site you linked, I came across the following statements:
Some Christians may consider calling on the Lord equivalent to the same as praying to Him. It is true that calling is a type of prayer, but calling is not merely praying. For example, Jeremiah 29:12 clearly differentiates the two: “Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.”
When we call loudly with an open mouth we experience Psalm 81:7a, 10b. As we love the Lord with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30), we call upon Him with all of our being. The use of the word “wide” in Psalm 81:10 implies a strenuous exercise. Opening our mouth this way leads us into a richer experience of Christ.
It is troubling that they would distinguish calling and prayer. The two can be the same thing. A prayer can be a cry out to God. It's these kind of statements that raise a bit of a question mark. They provide one example of a difference between calling and prayer and then they ready to make a claim about what other Christians fail to 'see' or practice.
The second sentence is even more troubling. It talks about audible calling. I don't necessarily have a problem with that by itself, but it also suggests it should be 'loud' and finally says that it should be a "strenuous exercise." When there start to be assertions about the intensity or volume at which it should be practiced, that's where things can get questionable and give people the ground to label it as a peculiar teaching.
A number of years ago, I attended a college conference where there was a message given on the subject of calling on the Lord. The brother who gave that message mentioned listening to some old tapes of WL speaking on the subject of calling on the Lord, and he was impressed by the way that WL had demonstrated "calling on the Lord." Apparently, the example WL gave was done at the top of his lungs with much more exuberance than it is normally practiced. So the brother was trying to make the point that there was supposedly a minimal level of intensity at which it should be practiced (I guess this might have been what WL taught at some point).
Later that day after getting back, we had a home meeting with a few who had been at the conference. One person in the meeting (who was at that conference) had a history of being a bit mentally unstable. During the meeting, we wanted to try to practice what the brother had talked about at the conference. As we were all shouting "Oh Lord Jesus" the unstable person started shouting louder and louder, and after a minute or so, this person had worked himself into a fit of rage and was yelling at all of us in the room. It took some effort to calm him down and the situation was a bit scary as it was completely unexpected.
Apparently, he had gotten angry that the rest of us weren't calling loud enough, based upon what he heard at the conference. Anyways, my point here is that the whole situation was instigated by a message claiming that the practice of calling on the Lord should have a certain level of 'intensity' to it. The person who was mentally ill took it to the extreme, but the rest of us didn't know any better either. We were just attempting to practice what we had been taught. This is where peculiarity comes into play. At least from what I've seen, what the LC teaches about calling on the Lord has the potential to be (and has been) taken to certain extremes.
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