Becoming a Place of Prayer

At the end of 2008 I felt called to take our congregation on a journey to becoming a place of prayer.  First of all that means that we will dedicate 2009 to learning about prayer and practicing prayer.  My goal is to update this blog weekly about what we are learning and experiencing.

We have been at this for about 2 weeks now and I have already noticed 2 things. First is that prayer is simple yet complicated.  Second is that it is very easy and tempting to get distracted from a focus on prayer.

Prayer seems simple at first - just taking to God.  But there are so many ways to talk to Him.   As I have started to look at prayer in the Bible, it is so much more than just asking for things.  There is praise, thanksgiving and listening.  And so many of the prayers in the Bible are responses to what God has told someone or to what He has already done in their lives.  It seems as though the more we pray the more we feel we need to pray and the more things we find to pray about.  The prayer well is an infinitely deep one.

The commitment to pray more is like most resolutions, easy to make and hard to keep.  We get busy with day to day concerns and pretty soon it has been several day since we have talked to God.  As a church we get distracted by programs that need to be run, people who need care, services and events that need to be planned, leaders need to be trained, budgets made and kept, money raised and bills paid.  Pretty soon we become an institution or just another non-profit organization.  Prayer becomes an afterthought if anything at all.  I found myself this week looking down that road and had to consciously decide to continue to make prayer my #1 priority and focus even in the midst of all the other stuff that needs to be done.