Every
Christian I know affirms three things about prayer...
- It is Important
- We don’t do enough of it – personally, corporately or any other way
- We are going to try to get better at it
Every church
I know or ever been associated with would acknowledge that prayer’s important,
yet the prayer meeting is the worst attended meeting of the week. That's almost
universally true. Something’s not quite right – somewhere between theory and
practice there is a disconnect, a breakdown between what we say/think is important
and what we actually do. Somewhere in my life and your life this strange process
takes place – a massive gulf between belief and behaviour. We know prayer
changes things, makes a difference and affects people and circumstances as God
works in answer. Yet, strangely we don’t really do that which we affirm is
important - it becomes difficult, awkward, sidelined, uninteresting and forgotten
about. How come?
Maybe there
is something in that. Maybe the reason why it is so difficult, is precisely because
it is so important. Our enemy doesn’t want us to do it – so in his subtle way,
he distracts us, keeps us busy and sidelines us from the key task. Maybe if we
did less and prayed more, greater things would happen. Families transformed,
communities transformed, churches transformed, societies transformed,
workplaces transformed by the power of God in answer to believing prayer. If
you find yourself agreeing to that statement, then stop right now and go and
pray. Praying for the next few minutes is far more important than reading the
rest of this blog. Go on....well??
But still we
don’t do it – not really. We need to change something. Stop being a hypocrite.
Either stop pretending it’s important – change our belief – or start practicing
it in reality – change our behavior. Well, what do you think? Send me your
comments or better still – see you at the next prayer meeting!
The 2 things I miss most about NBC are weekly Communion and Wednesday prayer. What would you say was the best principle or book or advice you've seen to help you with your personal prayer? Do you have much experience of testimony meetings - where people share verses/songs/situations/confessions/thanks? Would love to have got last night - but was at a good friend's evening wedding reception. Introduced myself to David Ford there and said I tried to pray for all the Christians leaders at Stormont. He's a member of my friend's home church near Templepatrick.
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