Men's Fellowship - Prayer

This past Sunday evening, we met for our Men's fellowship and experienced a time of challenge, of encouragement, and of repentance. Our thoughts were drawn to the subject of corporate prayer and we expressed our struggles, frustrations, and hopes regarding this important subject.

I am personally convinced that we have many pressures upon us that mold us into patterns of corporate prayer that are far from biblical. Even the best of the books and studies that we have used to help our prayer lives fail at some of the most basic levels. At the core of this is the assumption that the only thing that we care to pray about is our health, our finances, and our relationships...oh, and lest we forget the staple of all modern corporate prayer, travel mercies (forgive the sarcasm). Many of these books and studies try to show us that we are to pray for all of these things with the focus of bringing glory to God. This is an important point, but as I look to the teachings on prayer in the Scriptures I am left to wonder if there is an issue that lies deeper, at the heart of the things that we desire and the things that we do not.

There were certainly plenty of needs in biblical times. There was poverty in many of the places were the churches existed. There were broken families and relationships. There were illnesses and death. The mortality rate was about the same as today! There were accidents, disasters, social injustices, etc. All of these things were just as rampant then as they are now. But what was the focus of the prayers of the Church? Time and time again we see corporate prayer focused upon the unity of the Church, the edification of the Church, the need for wisdom in the Church, for the advancement of the Gospel as the Church continues to proclaim the Word of Life as it expands the dominion of the Lord Jesus as salvation goes forth. The Scriptures show forth the need to ask for God's strength and provision for the Church through the power of the Holy Spirit and through faith in the risen Lord Jesus.

I am not saying that we should not be praying for material or physical needs. Pray for them all...spiritual, physical, relational. Any thing that urges you to depend upon God and ask of His good provision. We are commanded in the Scriptures to do so! But understand that as a believer, you are able to pray for these things without necessarily needing the help of others in prayer.

Now, if you have labored in prayer and the burden is heavy, if you need encouragement and you need to know that others are bearing the burden with you, by all means, bring it before another brother or sister in Christ. Ask your church to pray for you! But all too often, I think we have reached a point in which we ask others to pray for things that we ourselves are not truly burdened about. Or else, we ask thinking that the Lord will not answer our prayer alone, but that He is more apt to answer the prayers when others are asking Him.

My greatest concern is that there are so many of these requests that there is little emphasis placed upon praying for the earnest and dire needs of the Church. It is very indicting that we do not see sincere and dependent prayers of corporate repentance, corporate supplications, and biblical yearnings for the strength of the Church in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.

Perhaps another hindrance to biblical corporate prayer is that we do not want to speak as if there is something wrong in our churches. In other words, if we are going to seek biblical corporate prayer, we will have to admit that we don't have perfect unity, perfect desires, perfect people, and perfect ministries. It takes corporate humility and corporate repentance. We must not be afraid to admit that we need to grow in these areas. But let us take heart and see the things that the Scriptures call us to value and let us pray that those things take place in our midst!

I am thankful for the discussion that we had Sunday night, and I hope that it continues, no only as a discussion, but that it changes our corporate prayer life to be more biblical, more sincere, and more effectual for the glory of the Lord Jesus! May we pray that it is so.