A FEW MOMENTS TO REST AND PRAY

Many of us have a few quiet days after Christmas. This is a good time to rest. You may want to read something you have not had time to read or maybe a new book given you for Christmas. This is also an important time to think and pray.

As Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart, it is well to savor all that God has done for us, for you. As you think of your celebration of Christmas, you may remember things that did not go as you wished or as God desires. Was there a conflict in your family? Pray for the people involved. Pray for God to heal the rift. Do you need to forgive someone? Do you need to ask God's forgiveness? Do you need to struggle with repentance until you can rest in the luxury of His grace.

You may need to look back at the tumultuous year that is coming to a close. It should alarm us, and cause us to pray. Americans need to pray for our country. We need to pray for the world. But even in the midst of the turmoil we need to rest in God. He is sovereign even in the face of immorality, lies, terrorism, war, disruption of homes driving needy people across the world.

And while you are thinking and praying, ask God to show you what you need to be praying for the coming year. What is God calling you, us, to join Him in?

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PRAYER REMINDERS

Believers need to continue to pray for one another when we're apart throughout the week. It is very easy to be so busy with our families, our jobs, our lives that we don't even remember our brothers and sisters in Christ. Paul wrote to Timothy that he remembered him in his prayers day and night. He wrote something very similar to Philemon and to the Philippians and other churches.

Frankly, my memory is not always that good. So I must discipline myself to remember my brothers and sisters. To do that I need a list. I need to pray through a church roll. I need to write people's names down, especially new people I meet on a Sunday or at other times in the week. And I need other people to help me remember. We have a prayer meeting each week with the primary purpose of praying for every church member.

I've also discovered that God we'll remind me to pray for other people. This sometimes seems coincidental although I'm not sure that it is. I may be going through a Walmart store, trying to pray for everybody I pass in the aisles, or sitting in the doctor's office praying through the waiting room. I see someone who reminds me of a brother or sister in Christ. I use that as a cue to pray for the person I remember as well as the person I see.

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PRAYING THE BOND OF FELLOSHIP

Praying for one another is a necessary element for tightening the bonds of fellowship in the church. Of course we need to pray for one another while we are in worship. Pray for the people seated around you or across the room from you. Pray for your pastor, the music leader, usher's, offering bearers. Pray for guests whom God would like to bring into the warmth of your fellowship. Nothing will make them feel as welcome as God touching their lives as you pray for them.

A man came up to me Sunday, and as we talked he said, “I have been thinking about you this week, feeling like I needed to pray for you.” I thanked him. And I told him I had had some illness and some spiritual attack last week. I believe God’s Spirit often calls people to our minds so we will pray for them. Ralph Speas once told my wife and I about his wife's mother calling in the middle of the night that she had a terrible burden to pray for their daughter. And she asked if they wouldn't go into her bedroom and check to see if she were all right. They went in and discovered a gas leak in the room, and their daughter being asphyxiated by it.

Sometimes the bond of Fellowship in a church is disrupted because there are people who just don't like one another in the church family. I think it was Tim Keller who said, “The church is the only organization in the world that is made up of natural enemies.” What do you do when you don't like someone, or someone in the church doesn't like you? You need to pray twice as much for that person. You will find this to be a holy discipline.

What if you have spiritual discernment, and you are terribly uncomfortable with someone in the church? Maybe you're convinced that someone is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Your prayers may be the primary protection for others in the church. And wouldn't it be wonderful if God did what He has sometimes done in the past, bringing about a Damascus Road miracle in that person's life?

There were times as a Pastor that I needed to confront someone in the church. I would not have dreamed of going to talk to them without having prayed for them with all of my heart. And it was always easier for me to go to someone, if I knew others had been praying for that person for months.

God binds us together in prayer.

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A 24 Hour Prayer Room

Many years ago my parent's church began a 24 hour Prayer Room. I heard some powerful testimonies of what God did through this ministry. I was also blessed to see things God did in the lives of my family members and others I knew who participated.

Many of you are familiar with churches that have 24 hour prayer rooms. Some were large enough we may began that they did not have too much trouble filling the hours. Others went out on faith trusting God to help them fill the 168 prayer slots each week.

Churches appoint someone to organize and administer this ministry. They set aside a room usually with an outside entrance. And they invite and recruit people to sign up for specific prayer times. My parent's church encouraged people to have a prayer partner who signed up to pray with them each week. These churches place prayer requests and possibly a church roll in the room for people pray through. My parent's church put a telephone in the room and publicized the number for people to call to pray with someone 24 hours a day seven days a week.  

My nephew, Trent Young, was a very young man when they started the prayer room. And it had a profound effect upon his life. He wrote me this about the prayer room.

“I usually went in the after-midnight hours because I worked late, and these were always open. I was scared to death someone would call. But hardly anyone ever did. I spent a little time praying over requests. I mostly praised God and spent time with Him.

“I put in two or three hours there a couple of nights a week. I don't know why praying in the prayer room was more important than praying at home, but it seemed to be. My prayer life developed during this time. It was non-existent before.

“The regiment, the scheduled length of time and the accountability was helpful in training me to pray and developing my relationship with God. Everyone seems to think that one has to have a prayer life before joining a prayer room or even a prayer group. But I think the opposite. I think these are the schools that God uses to develop our prayer life.”

Max Alexander, one of the pastors of my parent’s church when they were starting the prayer time, told me they faced more spiritual attack at that time than he had ever seen in his life. But they seemed to have more victory in people’s lives than they had ever seen. God will bless a church that is this serious about prayer.

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