When we read the New Testament, we discover that prayer is both a private and a public activity. Some of Jesus' teaching would appear to be biased against the public function but it isn't. He was very much against the showy 'look-at-me' type religious show-offs that in his words were just praying to themselves and not to God!

 

When we look at how the church developed, praying together was at the heart of the church. Right at the beginining of Acts, one of the first comments about the early church was that amongst other things 'they devoted themselves ... to PRAYER.'

 

At different times in Acts, we see the church praying TOGETHER - bringing to God the issues that they were facing as a church and looking to God to answer prayer. 

 

Many years later, James in his pastoral letter talks about churches that are fracturing apart through quarrels and disputes. He identifies these churches as being essentially poor in spiritual terms. The reason is they are not praying or when they pray they are perhaps just praying for purely selfish reasons, i.e. praying to/for themselves and not to God.

 

Praise God we are not a church that is fracturing apart but at the same time we are not very good when it comes to showing our belief and commitment to praying together.

 

This Friday is our monthly day of prayer and fasting. Let's do all we can to be praying TOGETHER on this day for the work of God in this church and in the community we endeavour to reach out to.