As I was praying in the prayer meeting before church tonight I was quite challenged by the way we pray for our city and nation and world and also what we pray for in those areas. I love that Eastside always includes mission in the services - its a great way to both partner with God in reaching out and also leep our eyes focused outward even as we build our inner selves in the service. However.
We tend to pray that God would move through those areas, we focus on praying for the non-christians the majority of the time, we are quite abstract. I was really challenged on this. God has sent us to reach the lost. He has already gone to them - they just can't see Him and don't recognise His presence. Our job is to bring in the harvest, to BE God and Show God and Bring God to those who can't see and don't know.
So I'm left wondering - should we be focusing on the non-christians or the Christians? I think that we should still pray the prayers we do at the mo but I'm wondering if it isn't even more important to lift up the Christians worldwide, nationwide, citywide, churchwide. To ask God to change us and challenge us to see the lost in our daily lives and to take some risks. To ask God to partner with us as we go - instead of to ask God to move and then go where HE leads.
Going, and praying on the move, has been a huge theme for me this year. It's a lesson that God has been teaching me both through the way my life is going and also through speaker after speaker. Alongside 'perception' 'going first' has been a steady theme that has deepened in meaning, intensity, and applicability.So question time! What do you think about the way we pray? Do you 'partner' with God? Is there a value in praying and what is it for you? What is intercessory prayer and do you do it? Do you have any themes God's been speaking to you about repeatedly? Can you share them with others? Have they changed your life? Why is it God sometimes seems to beat us overthe head with the same message over and over and over...?
Head thumping?!!?
3 comments:
I'm loving your thoughts here Cat!
Actually, this last 7pm I didn't pray for the Lost as I usually pray... but I really deeply interceded for us Christians to get our GO on!
Wow... are you feeling it!
I must admit... I think Christians like to hide behind prayer. I think Jesus wants us to get out of prayer meetings and pray while we GO and DO!
It seems to be a pendulum effct - we either pray constantly and do little else - or do do do and rarely pray. Somehow there has to be a happy medium. I think it has a lot to do with the reason why we pray as well... but thats another blog! At the mo the struggle is to get internet so it may be a while though...
Cat
I would like to mention that I don't always pray for what we have been asked to pray for in the pray meetings at the beginning of church (when I attend them). When we were having the weekly prayer meetings on .. Monday night i think it was.. I would often sit there and pray for the people that had turned up for the meeting. I figured that they were praying for everyone else but who was praying for them. And I still do that occasionally as I believe that not only do we need to be praying for non-Christians but we also need to be praying for whatever is going on in our fellow Christians lives.
Some people pray seemingly meaningless prayers. They pray what a lot of people call 'typical Christian anecdotes'. This is a very shallow but easy path. If you take this road it means that you do not need to think much about what it is that you are praying as it has been done many times before. Not that I am saying that we need to stop those prayers but I do think that some people need to think about what they are praying more and get onto a deeper level of prayer. The same goes for praying in tongues. It seems to me that some people pray in tongues cuz it is easier than thinking about what it is that you are saying.
I'm ganna stop commenting now cuz this is almost seeming like a blog in and of itself... sorry if it has come across that way..
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