Prayer Meeting

“And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.”

This evening we are re-starting a regular prayer meeting at our church. Re-starting is a bit loose, as we had a weekly prayer meeting briefly, for a year or maybe two, when our ministry began here late in 2013. I don’t recall how long we had it nearly as well as I recall how poorly attended it was. There were many times when during the hour that had been set aside I was the only one present. So, in a moment of practicality in considering my schedule, I cancelled the prayer meeting. I was already regularly spending time in prayer on my own and I didn’t need to schedule another period of that same thing into my week, did I?

Well, with prayer, as in so many things, it’s not about me! It has often occurred to me, particularly in the past 2-3 years, that there are a number of things that our congregation could be praying over. And not in the sense of putting those things in the prayer list I pull together for worship each Sunday morning, but that we should be gathering together outside of our Sunday worship to seek the Lord in prayer together.  

Things like the kinds of ministry we are engaged in within our community and that they would bear fruit pleasing to God. For our local schools and the tribal government. For our mission partners. For stronger families in our community. For sobriety and encouragement for those actively pursuing sobriety. For us to encourage each other as sisters and brothers in Christ. And as the old commercial said, “That’s not all!” for the Lord will certainly also lead us to pray for other things too.

Last Sunday afternoon we had a meeting of our church council and decided to resume some things that we haven’t done since the pandemic began. I put out the idea of beginning a prayer meeting. There wasn’t a whole lot of talking about the idea as we decided to do it on Wednesday’s a 6:30 PM.  And so tonight we begin. Join us if you are local and pray with and for us if you aren’t. Like the early church in the book of Acts, nay we be “joined together constantly in prayer.”

 

Photo credit: www.RaifordRoadChurch.org

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.