Biography
The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Hale is a native of Roanoke, Virginia. Cynthia earned a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University and a Doctor of Ministry from United Theological Seminary. She’s the founding pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Georgia, a dynamic congregation that began with just four people, and in 14 years has grown to over 4,500. Dr. Hale is widely recognized for her gifts as a preacher and has been recognized by Ebony magazine as one of the greatest black women preachers in America. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Early Morning Rendezvous" 
       Mark 1:35 says, "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house 
       and went off to a solitary place where he prayed."

The previous day had been quite demanding and the new one promised to be the same. Now that people were aware of the authority with which Jesus taught and the power with which he could deal with their difficulties, few and far between would become the times he would have to himself. Ever since Jesus called the demons out of the possessed man in Capernaum, the people would not leave him alone. News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee. The people began pressing upon him with their problems, bringing him their diseased to be healed.

It was for this reason that Jesus had come to earth. His mission was to meet the needs of humankind, but there were so many of them. How would Jesus meet them all? Where would he get the strength, given his own humanity, to keep up the pace, to continually face the crowd with the fresh new teaching that they desperately needed, to keep on giving of himself in limitless ways?

Sound familiar? If Jesus needed help, what about you and me? Given the demands that are placed upon our time, our energies, our resources that are simply a part of living from day to day, particularly as we seek to be faithful and wise students for the glory of God. Everyday there are needs to be met, decisions to be made, business to be attended to. Everyday there are people to relate to, conflicts to be resolved, actions that require more than we in our own strength alone can achieve.

If Jesus needed help, what about you and me?

Jesus didn't struggle with these concerns long. Early in his life and ministry, he discovered the practicality and the power of an early morning rendezvous, as the writer Mark indicates with his words: "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went to a solitary place, where he prayed."

Jesus knew that he needed help. He knew that he could not live in this world without God. If he was forever going to be giving out, he must sometimes be taking in. If he was going to spend himself for others, he must spend time spiritually refreshing himself. Jesus knew that it was not humanly possible to accomplish all that he needed to accomplish every day of his life in his own strength alone. He also knew that he didn't have to. Not when the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wise God, his loving Father was ever present, ready to provide, whatever he needed, whenever he needed it, however he needed it. All he had to do was ask. The Bible says we have not because we ask not. If we ask, we will receive.

That's what prayer is. Prayer is coming to God. Prayer is seeking God. Prayer is the appeal of the soul to God. Prayer is standing before God as "an empty pitcher before a full fountain." Prayer is connecting with God who is the power source. Prayer is opening ourselves up to God for nourishment, as the flowers and trees open up to their environment: the air, the sunlight, and the rain. Prayer is communing with God. It is living an intimate relationship with God, surrendering all that we are to all that God is, as Jesus did, who said, "The Father and I are one, the works that I do are not mine but the One who sent me." Not to pray is to be guilty of the incredible folly of ignoring the possibility of adding God to our limited resources. In prayer, Jesus sought the strength that only communion and fellowship with God could provide. If Jesus needed this in his life, what about you and me?

Although Jesus lived in unbroken fellowship with God, it was his regular habit to devote the early morning hours of the day to prayer. Though he practiced God's presence at all times, he did not neglect an early morning rendezvous with God. A rendezvous is a meeting at an appointed place and time. To have a rendezvous with someone is not to leave the meeting to chance. It's setting a date, a time, a place to meet, and it's keeping our appointment, whatever the cost.

Let's be totally honest, shall we? Most of our meetings with God are not planned. Our prayers are occasional, spontaneous, spur of the moment prayers. If we meet with God, it's usually an emergency or a crisis. Our backs are up against the wall, bills are due, a child is sick, it’s the end of the semester and there are exams to take, too many papers to write, too many proposals to get in, we need help. I know what I’ll do, we say, we’ll call God. If the truth be told, we have tried everything else, now we will try God.

Something came up so we had to take time to talk with God. That's no way to carry on a relationship with the lover of our souls and the one we say we love above all else. If you love God, why not take time to talk to God and let God talk to you. Because God is our best friend, there isn't anything that we can't tell God, ask God about or let God know about.

Our friendship with God should be a daily and consistent one, like that of Bertram Polloch who was one time Bishop of Norwich. The life of a Bishop is a very busy one, with people coming and going all the time, clamoring for your attention. Bishop Polloch had certain times set aside for prayer. No matter who came to see him at those times, they were told that he could not be interrupted because he had "an appointment with God." We need to have an appointment with God every day. It needs to be a priority engagement that cannot be broken.

Jesus didn't leave his meeting with God to chance. It appears from this text that he had an appointed time and place. It appears that Jesus' favorite time for his rendezvous with God was early morning. "Very early in the morning while it was still dark, while the dew was still on the ground, Jesus got up!" It takes discipline to get up in the morning for anything, and yet Jesus felt it was important enough. If Jesus felt it was important, we need to do more than seriously consider it. It takes discipline to get up in the morning. The same discipline with which you get up to start your day, needs to be channeled so that you get up a little earlier to meet God.

Some of us wouldn't think of starting our day without breakfast, but we start the day without God. We wouldn't dare leave the house without a shower, but we leave without a serious time of prayer. Why can't we get up? I know! You’re tired. We try to pray at night, but that doesn't work. We end up nodding on our knees, falling asleep on the pillow, cutting God off in the middle of a sentence.

Let me tell you something. The morning Jesus got up before dawn to pray was the morning after the busiest day of his brief ministry. He deserved to sleep late after such a grueling day, but he did not. He got up! It takes discipline to get up in the morning and it takes desire. The kind of desire that David expressed in Psalms 63:1:

To get up in the morning to meet God is an expression of our sincere desire for God and for relationship with God. It says to God that you are the most important person in my life, more important than self and my needs. It was discipline and desire for God that moved Jesus to seek God early and discover the blessedness of an early morning meeting with God. Morning time is a wonderful time to meet God.

In the morning, a new day is ushered in, untouched. The nights' sleep separates us from the hassles and cares of the previous day. In the morning, our minds are clear. In the morning, we have an opportunity to start all over again and to allow God to set the tone for the day. Imagine meeting the source of joy and peace first thing in the morning! What choice then do we have but to experience God's joy all day long.

When you meet God in the morning, when you start your day with prayer and praise, with the experience of God's love for you, what a difference it will make in your day. In the morning, we can get a head start on the demands that confront us throughout the day. In the morning, we are prepared for all that may come our way in that particular day of duties, testings, disappointments and disagreements. The morning offers an opportunity to invite God to be present with us and to participate in our living in a significant way. If God is not invited to be first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, God will be in last place the remainder of the day.

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place when he prayed."

When you rendezvous with God not only is the time important, you need the right place as well, the right atmosphere. Any old place won't do. It needs to be a quiet place, a place where you won't be interrupted, a place where there will be few, if any, distractions. We live in a noisy, crowded world. It's difficult to find a place of solitude in our life with all the distractions: telephones, televisions, VCR’s, radios, husbands, children, parents, cats and dogs. That's why we have to get up before day, before anyone else is up to meet God.

Some of us say that we pray and try to talk to God, but God won't listen to us. God is talking God's head off, but we can't hear God. We need to go somewhere and get quiet. We need to find some solitude, a secret place, a place to be alone with God. It's in the stillness that God reveals God's self to us. When I was growing up and would get all bent out of shape about certain things that were going on in my life, my mother used to tell me, to go somewhere and get quiet, be still so I can hear from God. It's when we are still and listening to God that God speaks to our soul. Has God not told us in his Word: "Be still and know that I am God."

My ancestors, the Negro slaves, understood the need for quiet to hear God. They used to steal away to a secret place to meet God and then sing:

Interview with Cynthia Hale
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Cynthia, you are filled with passion when you preach the Word and you just told me the Word is in you.

Cynthia Hale: Yes!

Talbot: Where did you learn that kind of passionate preaching?

Hale: Well, actually, I grew up with the Word. A child evangelism program and then a junior high school teacher taught me the Word. But, of course, the Holy Spirit is what gives you the power and the passion.

Talbot: Cynthia, take us to your church on a Sunday morning in Decatur, Georgia. 4,500 people!

Hale: 4,500 people. About 2,000 worship on Sunday morning, each Sunday morning, and it starts out like me—high praise! We just spend about 45 minutes to an hour in praise and celebration and hearing the Word and praying together and then I preach.

Talbot: And with your preaching and with the high praise, there is also pain. A lot of pain.

Hale: Yes, a lot of pain.

Talbot: Now tell us about the connection between the pain and the prayer that you talk about.

Hale: Well, Jesus said, "I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly." And in the Old Testament understanding we know that God is Jehovah-Rapha, the Healer. "I am the God who heals you." So what we seek to do is to bring abundant life to people through introducing them to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Of course, that salvation, that deliverance, delivers them from pain. And so, we have to actually address it in our worship experiences and preaching.

Talbot: You told me earlier, there is nothing that is covered up in your church.

Hale: Nothing.

Talbot: What is the pain? What kinds of suffering do you see?

Hale: Well, there are relational causes for the pain. You know, divorce, rejection, persons who are single and struggling with that when God said it’s not good for persons to be alone. There is spousal abuse and child abuse. It’s in the world, it’s in the church, it’s everywhere, and we address it.

Talbot: And so, what happens, though, when you address it? What happens to change souls?

Hale: Well, what happens is people feel free enough to begin to identify it and acknowledge it, to take off the mask. I often say, "Let’s take off our facades, let’s be real." Then they come forward and they say I need help. Someone to deal with it. And we have small group activities that allow them to do that: 12 step programs, and then Women in Purple, men’s programs that help them to deal with whatever their source of pain is.

Talbot: You focused in your earlier message on when it was still dark, the early morning rendevous.

Hale: Right.

Talbot: Have there been dark moments in your own life?

Hale: Yes, there have been.

Talbot: Can you talk about it?

Hale: Well, one in particular, the one that I think that comes to mind. I am 48 years old and single, never been married. And so a real dark time for me was coming to the realization that I was 40 and then 42 and 43, still unmarried and with no children. I didn’t understand what God was doing. So that was difficult for me to deal with. And it was in prayer that the release came, that I was able to say, like Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Not my will, God, but yours be done. I don’t understand this." So that was probably the darkest moment in my life: understanding my singleness.

Talbot: In prayer the release came. Now, what kind of prayer? Tell us how you do your early morning rendevous with God.

Hale: Well, I have different positions for prayer. Sometimes I’m sitting in a comfortable chair reading the Bible or reading a devotional guide and having a wonderful time of prayer. And then other times I’m on my knees, sometimes I’m on my face, depending on the intensity of where I happen to be in what’s going on in my life or in the lives of the persons that I am praying for. But that early morning rendevous is what has made a difference in my life because it helps me to continually have the intimacy with God.

Talbot: And so, the power of prayer to confront pain in your life. Talk about the gift of music, though, in your life that helps you through. You are a cultured musician. You studied voice.

Hale: I am. Yes, I did. I studied voice at Hollins College. A soprano. And so I sing. You noticed that I finished the sermon with a hymn.

Talbot: Now, that is a spiritual. Give us a little bit of that if you were in the pulpit.

Hale: (singing) "Hush, hush, somebody’s calling my name; Oh, hush, hush, somebody’s calling my name." And so I just sing. Sometimes when I’m at home or driving down the interstate, wherever I am, I’ll just break out in song, praise. It lifts your spirits, it connects you with God, it helps you to get in tune with what’s really going on beyond the craziness of life.

Talbot: I’ve got to ask you, Cynthia. Did your mother have something to do with that gift of music and that spirit that fills you?

Hale: Well, my mother had something to do with the spirit, but she can tell you herself that she doesn’t sing.

Talbot: What was that that you remember learning at her knee about the spirit?

Hale: I learned how to pray at my mother’s knee. She’s the one that taught me how to pray and the power of prayer. She taught me a simple prayer at first: "Now I lay be down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep." But then my mother taught me how to begin to have conversations with God on my own. It’s my mother that helped me to understand what a personal, intimate relationship with God will do for your life.

Talbot: And about the need to find that quiet place?

Hale: That’s right!

Talbot: Dr. Cynthia Hale, you are a gift! Thank you so much.