Yes, this is another church blog post. And yes this time we’re going to be talking about the very generic topic of prayer. As expected with most churches, there will always be a stress on prayer. “What will be so unusual about this blog entry?” I hear you say. Nothing much, apart from the shocking fact that I think, and some others agree with me too, that we as a community of believers don’t pray enough.
What is Ansy talking about here? What do you mean we don’t pray enough? We don’t pray at church? Yes we do! In fact, I counted, yesterday during the church service, the worship team, sound team and Bert prayed together before the sermon at 9:50am for about 5 minutes, in that back room with the large window, you know, where all the children go during the service. We prayed together twice during the worship set, we prayed after the offering bags were collected. We prayed altogether after the sermon, before the final worship set, some of us prayed individually during the worship, we prayed with Bert after the worship. That’s plenty of times!
We still don’t pray enough.
Yes, we have cell groups that we meet weekly with. We share, we get transparent, we’re open, (sometimes). But we definitely pray. Is that not enough? Yes we pray alone at home, in our rooms, some of us have prayer journals. Some of us pray with our families over meal times, sometimes we’ll pray together even when there isn’t food in front of us. We pray. Is that still not enough?
No. Not enough.
I have a theory, actually, not really a theory. I believe this to be true: you can never have too much of prayer. We can’t really limit our prayer to a number. It’s not quantity, it’s not the amount of prayers we pray to God. It’s quality.
I am constantly asking myself, do I really really pray? What does it mean to really really pray? No, not just praying for the sake of praying, but to really really really pray. I can’t stress this with enough “really”s, really.
I am talking about being honest, being completely truthful in our communication with God.
Do we really do this? Regularly?
I was looking for a sermon to listen to on the topic of prayer (which is never too hard to find), but I prayed that God would let me hear one that would be special, one that would be different. Through the old archives of the BCEC Sunday messages, I found one from July 2011.
And the different and crazy thing was hearing Bert preach on praying, radically praying for people to love beyond. What was awesome was hearing him grab Mike randomly during the service to pray for him. To really step out of the comfort zone to pray.
Other things that really got highlighted out to me, personally, was the reminder that we all have a vision as to where we want to go. And we can’t do it alone, it requires a community, a praying community, a royal priesthood that will intercede for one another, to get us there.
And this is my vision for BCEC, to see us not only grow spiritually, but to become a community that will become a house of prayer. A community of believers that really really prays.
We have worship teams, welcome teams, children ministries, youth ministry, students… Cell groups a plenty. We have people that help out with food bank, food cycle. Lots of teams of people at BCEC. One thing we lack is a prayer ministry. A vital and necessary ministry to every church.
If we want our church to be a place where streams of rivers will flow from our hearts, we need to start with prayer.
And this is my challenge: would you like to join our prayer team? To be challenged on how to really really really pray? To learn how to be better communicators, to intercede for others, to be prayerful and honest to God, but to really be that house of prayer?
Pray about it.
And let me know.
Thanks.