More than once in the Gospels, Jesus says, “When you pray....” Not if but when. Regular prayer is an expectation for Jesus’ disciples. In fact, prayer may be the best indicator of our relationship with God. Why? Because it shows how much we understand our need of God. We need his gracious presence as we strive to faithfully navigate life in a sinful world for his glory.
But prayer can be difficult. We can be timid in prayer, fail to know what to pray, or even find ourselves indifferent toward prayer. This blog post won’t answer every question about prayer or offer any magic bullets for an amazing prayer life. However, the elders do want to give you two encouragements to pray.
First, is the video above. It gives some helpful direction on how to pray with someone when the other person is praying. We want to do more than listen quietly to someone else while they pray. We want to engage with them so that their prayers lead us into praying alongside them. We try to lay this out in a simple ARC method.
The second encouragement is the creation of a monthly prayer emphasis. In the future, we plan to resume our prayer gatherings. Each month, the theme of those meetings will be carried on during the prayers offered in our weekly worship services. The goal is to maximize our unity in prayer as a church across the month. More than just Sundays, we hope this monthly emphasis will be a resource for your own private and family prayers during the week. Although we are not yet resuming our prayer gathering, we are beginning these emphases on Sundays. June's prayer emphasis is love.
These are just a couple of ways the elders want to stir you up to always pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1).
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