Prayer
by Pastor John Stone
As I write 2007 is a few short days away. Dick Clark and company will once again lead the procession in counting down the last minutes and seconds of 2006, thus ushering in 2007. There will be celebrations, cheering and countless resolutions about how people want to start fresh in the New Year.
Personally, I won’t be making any resolutions for 2007. I am long past pretending that I will ever keep one promise of change past January. In light knowing I am not making resolutions, I have been challenged by my recent conversations. In the past month too many of my conversations have brought up prayer for me to believe this is a coincidence. My heart feels like God is calling me to bring prayer back to the center of my life again, and to invite others to join me in this endeavor. Now, I want to be clear, I don’t want anyone to feel guilty if they are not praying or feel like prayer is only a small part in your life. Hopefully, as the New Year begins, many of you will join me in a renewed vigilance to prayer. My invitation is that we will make time in our busy and frenetic schedules for prayer. My hope is that we would make prayer a regular part of your day. Whether it is while you commute, go on a break at work or walking your dog, each of us would intentionally set aside time to connect with God.
This invitation is a call to reaffirm our desire to have a relationship with God. It is taking time to let God know what is on our hearts and minds as well as taking time to sit be silent and invite God to speak. This doesn’t have to be some great mystical experience. More so, this most likely will become a time where we put aside our need to talk and fill the quiet spaces of prayer with words, and just listen. This doesn’t have to be in a room tucked away from the world, rather for me it frequently happens in a variety of places. It may be praying as I am driving, walking, taking a break from work and sitting at my desk. In the normal routine of prayer I find times of prayer, I invite God to speak. I drive, walk or sit quietly. Some times I hear nothing. Other times, a creative solution comes to mind, an answer to prayer becomes visible, or I just feel a peace wash over me as I sit attentively listening for God.
My prayer for Crossroads in 2007 is that we will be inspired to pray. I don’t want anyone to feel guilty for not participating. I would hope that the Holy Spirit would convince each of our hearts to the vital role prayer plays in our relationship with God and the life of our faith community. As Charles Spurgeon said, “‘The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.’”
Jim Cymbala later in the same book quoted above called out to the people of the Brooklynn Tabernacle proclaiming, “From this day on, the prayer meeting will be the barometer of our church. What happens on Tuesday night (prayer meeting) will be the gauge by which we will judge success or failure because that will be the measure by which God blesses us...The format of a prayer meeting is not nearly as important as its essence - touching the Almighty, crying out with one’s whole being. I have been in noisy prayer meetings that were mainly a show. I have been with groups in times of silent prayer that were deeply spiritual. The atmosphere of the meeting may vary. What matters most is that we encounter the God of the universe, not just each other.”
As 2007 begins I invite you to join us for 24 Prayer, 6-7 January 2007. You will notice that 24 Prayer is undergoing a few changes. Instead of starting on Friday at 7:00 pm, we will begin on Saturday at 6:00 am. Instead of a community time of prayer to begin, we will start with individuals coming and praying through the day and night until 10:00 am on Sunday. We have made these changes in hopes that we will more intimately tie the weekend of 24 Prayer into the Sunday morning service, and hoping that we will be able to include those who have to drive a long distance. This new format will also allow us to offer a few half an hour slots on Saturday morning between 9:00 am and 12:00 pm for those who would like to participate but are busy or feel a little overwhelmed by trying to taking on a whole hour of prayer. Finally, we will conclude 24 Prayer with the whole congregation on Sunday morning.
Prayer is vital to our spiritual health, and I want to invite you to join me in prayer throughout 2007. Maybe this will be individually and maybe this will be venturing out to join in 24 Prayer at Crossroads. For me as 2007 comes to a close next December, I would like to look back and praise God for how the Holy Spirit inspired a Fresh Wind and Fresh Fire in our lives and Church through prayer.
May God richly bless you and your family this next year. May God’s peace, hope and love sustain you.