No Hurry Prayer
We had a wonderful time at our Prayer Night this week, joining together to seek the Lord, intercede for one another, and just "be still and know that He is God." Sometimes we all need to punctuate the run-on sentences that are our lives these days, and to stop....and exhale...in the presence of the Lord. Hopefully you experienced that on Wednesday night.
We don't have another such churchwide prayer gathering planned any time soon, though all of our weekly small groups should include time focused on praying together. Either way, we still want to make prayer a regular practice, both individually and collectively. Our church will only be as strong as our prayer lives, and I hope you won't miss the opportunity to continue to seek the Lord now "while He may be found" (Isaiah 55:6). That's part of what our recent Prayer Life sermon series has been about.
As we have talked about in this series, most of us want to pray more, and pray better, but we have a hard time developing the habit and committing to "devote yourselves to prayer." (Colossians 4:2) The truth is, it is easy to get distracted by the busy-ness of life's business, and sidetracked from what is really important, so that we forget to spend focused time daily talking to God. So many of us live our lives that way every day--spinning our wheels, working hard, even planning diligently, but "too busy" to pray. We would all do well to listen to the words of Martin Luther, who wrote, "I have to much I have to do that I must spend the first three hours of each day in prayer." He was too busy NOT to pray.
If you are like me, you probably feel like your life is always lived on a deadline, and usually in a hurry. When that happens, God often gets the leftovers of our time. As Samuel Chadwick once said, "Hurry is the death of prayer."
That was really the point of our gathering on Wednesday night. To stop. And pray. If only for a brief time slot, we wanted to set aside time as a church body to join together in prayer. I know there were some long pauses of silence that were uncomfortable to some people. We are accustomed to always filling our time with noise and activity, so that any time we sit quietly at the feet of Jesus, like Mary, our Martha tendencies tend to come to the surface. (Luke 10:38-42)
Hopefully our time of talking to God together with fellow believers was meaningful and an end in itself--if only because we were communing with our Heavenly Father, and touching things that are eternal. But I also hope it was a means to an end, to inspire you to dedicate yourself to pray more.
So many of the great moves of God throughout the centuries--from Biblical times to church history--have been borne out of God's people pulling themselves from their routine, taking time away from their distracted lives, and seeking His face. May the Lord continue to move among His people as we continue to seek Him with our whole hearts.
I am praying for you, as I hope you are for me, and I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.
--Pastor Ken
