Prayer in Community
It’s powerful to spend time alone in prayer. It’s important and it will change the path and pattern of your life. But gathering to pray will connect you to other believers like almost nothing else.
“And let us take thought of how to spur one another on to love and good works, not abandoning our own meetings, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and even more so because you see the day drawing near.”
Hebrews 10:24-25
Community is always important; it is how God made us to live and flourish. God did not intend us to be isolated. We are designed with a need for other people, and we are our best selves when we have healthy relationships with others. Life is meant to be lived together.
“For just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body—though many—are one body, so too is Christ.”
1 Corinthians 12:12
“The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part…”
1 Corinthians 12:25 MSG
It can be hard to be dependent. Culture is continually telling us all that we need to be independent! And to some extent, we do, but that’s not really how God designed us to flourish. We need community.
Healthy (adult) relationships require each party to give and receive. This means we must learn to express love well and to express needs honestly. The closest relationships are those where each person is free to say “I need x or y” without being afraid of being a burden or being judged. And people form the deepest bonds with one another when they trust one another with their needs.
Another reason it is important to pray together: memory is a key to spiritual health.
“Sometimes you literally cannot pray on your own, and you need to borrow from the faith of those around you.”
Kathryn Greene-McCreight .
A perfect example of this is the story recounted in Mark 2. The paralytic in this story literally borrowed on the abilities of his friends when he had no ability to get before Jesus on his own. Jesus was teaching to a packed house, but his friends made a way. They tore open a hole in the roof (evangelical vandalism) and lowered down their friend right into the presence of Christ.
“The faith of the friends here is crucial for the paralytic’s healing.”
Kathryn Greene-McCreight.
By praying for one another, we can do the same for one another now. We can do the same for our children!
"Your prayers make a difference. Not only do they affect your own life but also they can affect the course of history. How providence and prayer work together is a mystery. In some extraordinary way your prayers affect the outcome of events. God is sovereign and works out his purposes through history. Yet he involves you in this process."
Nicky Gumbel
This week we commit to becoming people who gather to pray together, for one another, and for others, believing that God hears, and that prayer does in fact make a difference.
“Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.”
Colossians 4:2 NLT
AMEN