Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favour granted us in answer to the prayers of many.
2 Corinthians 1:3-11 (TNIV)
A couple of weeks ago I threw a question up on this blog that I was hoping the Estevan Alliance Church family would respond to and start a discussion with me. The question was simply this: What does our pattern of congregational prayer say about EAC? In that post I did the most dangerous thing that any amateur blogger can do – I asked for feedback. Nothing keeps you as humble, and deflates your sense of self-importance as quick as soliciting feedback on a blog post – because if you go and look at that post today you will see a whopping one singular response to my question. Special thanks go out to Brian Zinchuk for keeping me from feeling like a total failure.
But even though I received very little feedback on the blog comments started trickling in through Facebook and emails and face-to-face conversations about people’s response to our practice of congregational prayer and sharing in the Sunday morning services. Some of the encouraging things I’ve heard from people include responses like:
“The prayer time is my favourite part of the worship service”
“I love hearing people share about what God is doing in their lives”
“I never would have known they were suffering without the sharing time. Now I know how to pray for them”
“I feel like this sort of thing really builds community”
Most of what I heard from you was exhilarating and encouraging but some other common threads started to emerge in the responses that weren’t as positive. Specifically I heard from a number of you that there were some not-so-insignificant doubts about participating in such a prayer time and after consolidating the responses I think I’ve identified three main culprits that I want to address this week. Three lies that we are telling ourselves that keep us from fully engaging in corporate prayer the way I am convinced that Jesus wants us to engage.
Lie #1: My needs are too unimportant to bother the church with
Lie #2: My situation is too embarrassing to share in church
Lie #3: Sharing answered prayer is insensitive to those who are struggling with real needs
This Sunday join us as we explode these falsehoods with a healthy dose of God’s truth and learn together what it means to become a people of prayer.
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