Praying with others…
Do you have or take the opportunities there are to pray together with other Christians?
Why is it important that we pray together with one another and not just in private for one another?
How do you feel about expressing something as personal as prayer out loud before someone else? What will they think? Will you find the right words to say for the situation?
Perhaps you think that praying in public doesn’t seem personal enough? I mean actual prayer meetings can have us praying about people and ministries we don’t know much about. They might not seem like a very exciting place to be so why go?
We see lots of examples in Scripture of the early church praying together… take Acts 4 for example:
23 On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. 25 You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
“‘Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
26 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord
and against his anointed one.
27 Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. 29 Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. 30 Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
This prayer gives us three good reasons why praying together is important:
- It was the natural reaction of the people to unite in prayer to support Peter and John in this way
- It was a way of affirming Scriptural truth to their own hearts and to the hearts of Peter and John
- It formed the basis for action, both God’s action and their action in response to the situation
Forward on a few years to the church in Corinth where public prayer was happening in tongues and the church were full of division. We’re going to be looking at Paul’s strongly worded letter to them on Wednesday night at Women to Women and see how he teaches them to be defined by love as they meet together… we’ll be applying the principles from 1 Corinthians 14:1-33 to our own prayer lives and hopefully encouraging each other as we pray together. We’d love you to join us.
