I want to challenge you to start coming to Prayer Meetings on Wednesday nights! Prayer Meeting seems like a plain, tired, worn out idea. I sometimes think the perception of Prayer Meeting is that it is for Seniors and Choir members. People that have nothing better to do or who have to be there anyway. It is very sad to see what was once considered a source of great power in many congregations, pushed aside and ignored.
The history of weekly Prayer Meetings is fascinating. The Lord has time and again blessed His people when they gather together for prayer. The sick have been healed, the lost saved, God’s grace and mercy have been poured out. Rev. Charles Spurgeon thought it one of the most important weekly meetings of the congregation.
We have a simple format on Wednesday nights. We open with prayer and sing a few songs. We then have a short time for updates and additions to our prayer list and then an open time of prayer. We follow this up with a time of study. The main focus of our time is on prayer.
Objections:
1. Why can I not just pray at home? Well you can and you should, but a mid-week prayer service is a time of corporate prayer and worship. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” - (Matthew 18:20 ESV) It is good for us to gather together to pray! It is also an encouragement through accountability and common concern to pray for the whole ministry of the church and the needs of the congregation and community. Having different folks together makes our prayers more diverse and cover things we may miss.
2. I am too busy! Really, I know that some probably are really busy, but how many of you really are too busy to squeeze an hour in on Wednesday nights? Ok, I will even play dirty pool and ask you what is more important than this time in prayer with your church family? Now, I know that some with young children, you are very busy and others your job really pushes you during the week. Even so, I want you to examine your life and see if you really are too busy on Wednesdays or is that just a convenient excuse not to come. That is not a conversation you need to have with me, your pastor. It is one you need to have with the Lord.
3. It is boring! I do not think it is boring, but it is not entertaining. Prayer is work! It is part of our Spiritual warfare. War is always hard! Praying together requires concentration, it requires faith, it requires you to concentrate your mental faculties to that one task at hand. It is not boring, but it is not easy nor entertaining. It is work that produces much fruit and changes the world around us. Consider what James says about prayer. “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its
fruit.” (James 5:13-18 ESV)
Come and join us for prayer meeting and see what happens when we pray together for God’s will to be done!
Dr. Kyle E. Sims
Pastor
