Day #2: “Planning to Pray Together”
1 Thess. 5:25 Brothers, pray for us.
So, yeah. That is one of the shortest verses in the Bible. As Paul drew his first letter to the Thessalonians to a close, he simply asks them to pray for him. This is not uncommon. In other places Paul asks for prayer. (See also, 2 Cor. 1:11, Col. 4:3, 2 Thess. 3:1.) Is that surprising to you? It is easy to think of the Apostles as pillars of the faith that tower above mere mortals. We can imagine that Paul is always poured out, never needing help from another human. If that is what we imagine, we could not be further from the truth. Paul believed that God chooses to work through prayer. But he also knew that God’s intention is for us to pray for each other.
In personal life, I have often found that God answers the prayers of other people for me… more quickly than he answers my prayers for myself. There could be many reasons why this is true. Since humility is the key to prayer, humbling yourself to ask others to pray for you moves in the right direction. On the flip side, we are always tempted to receive God’s powerful answers to prayer and forget that the power came from outside of us. When we ask others for prayer, it reminds us (and them) that we are dependent upon God. Finally, God’s plan for us is to grow relationally, so prayer from others accomplishes this greater goal. We will talk more about the theology of group prayer next week. For now, I want to stay practical.
How can we pray together during these 40 days?
There are several opportunities for you to do that as a group. We will be praying together as a group during the evening service. We will be praying in our community groups. We will even have some additional group prayer times in the next few weeks.
In addition to those things, I would like to encourage you to be intentional to pray with others during this time. Like the Apostle Paul, why not ask someone you know: would you pray for me?
- Can you find a time to connect with friends or family for mutual prayer?
- Maybe at lunch breaks
- On a phone call at night
- While you eat Breakfast together
- Before you tuck your kids into bed
- When sharing a car ride
- Who can you ask to commit to praying with you?
- Family, friends, spouse… sometimes we fail to ask for prayer from the people we know best.
- At your community group… this program gives you an excellent excuse to ask someone that you don’t know real well to pray for you.
- Notice how Paul asked the people he was discipling to pray for him. Prayer is a two-way street. For example, many parents pray for their kids but fail to ask their kids to pray for them. Jesus modelled this when he asked his disciples to keep watch with him in the garden.
- Be certain to pray together for our three target prayer items: New Building, Spiritual Renewal, and a personal item.
Unlike other things, we don’t usually fall into mutual prayer accidentally. We need to initiate. We need to follow the lead of the Apostle Paul and ask others… Pray for us!