Thursday, October 2, 2008

A Few Words About Prayer


The tile pictured at left can be found on the plaza outside the Cathedral in Vilnius, Lithuania. The word on it begins and ends with "s." It means "miracle" in the Lithuanian language.

I've set the picture of this tile as my computer desktop. It reminds me to pray.

The subject of prayer comes up every day. Just now I got off the phone with a woman asking prayer for a friend. In the afternoon I bicycled to Howard Lake Good Samaritan Center for worship and prayer. We pray at every family meal, every church meeting, every crisis. My favorite book about prayer (translated from the Norwegian) is by Ole Hallesby. He says "to pray is to let Jesus come into our hearts." When we pray we admit our weakness and explicitly rely on God's strength.

Becky and Diann from our church are attending a prayer school this week in Hutchinson. (You can learn more about the prayer school they are attending by downloading a brochure here.) Their hope is to grow a prayer ministry that will, among other things, focus on praying for our church's life and work. Many in our church and community, have been pray-ers for a long time. Experience has shown, however, that prayer seems to be more powerful as people gather together and agree together in regard to their intercessions. (See Matthew 18:19 and notice that the promise is for "two of you," that is, two who are believers and followers of Jesus.)

Prayer remains a mystery. We do not control God with our prayers. God will only answer as and when He sees best. Still, God has commanded us to pray, so we do.

Please pray for the future prayer ministry of our church.

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