Launch Day
21 Days of Prayer
Good morning!
Welcome to DaySpring’s 21 days of prayer. We’re so glad you’ve joined us!
This is our first year of including a written daily devotional, as well as our in-person prayer meetings. It is our sincere hope that you will join us both ways as often as you can.
To kick things off, today we want explore why prayer is important, what a praying church looks like, and how things happen when we pray.
E.M. Bounds says:
“Thus, in every circumstance of life, prayer is the most natural outpouring of the soul, the unhindered turning to God for communion and direction. Whether in sorrow or in joy, in defeat or in victory, in weakness or in health, in calamity or in success, the heart leaps to meet with God, just as a child runs to his mother’s arms, ever sure that her sympathy will meet every need.”
Let that sink in for a moment: Praying is something we can do all day long.
Why is prayer important both personally and corporately?
In the personal realm, our relationship with the Lord grows as we pray. He is our Father and loves to hear us talk to him. But prayer is not just talking to God; it’s also spending time listening to what He says to us. When we take the time to talk to God about our thoughts and plans, it allows Him the opportunity to make changes or give us better ideas.
When we gather corporately to pray, incredible things happen. Sharing our petitions and burdens together helps build community in the church body. It also lessens our own burdens, as we have people praying with and for us. Additionally, sharing prayer with others builds everyone’s faith when we see how God answers that prayer.
What does it mean to be a church that prays?
It starts with making sure that prayer is the first thing we do, not what we look to when all else fails. If we are a praying church, maybe we won’t leave prayer to just happen in the middle or end of our worship services. What would it look like if our conversations of greeting as we arrive at church included a moment of “How can I pray for you today?” or “What has God done in your life this week?” It means making sure that as we launch into our external ministries we are praying and have people praying for us and for those to whom we will minister. It means praying for your pastoral team and sending a text or card to encourage them. It looks like reaching out to someone that God puts on your heart to let them know you prayed for them. It looks like praying as if our lives depend on it.
What kinds of things happen when we pray?
Do you think there is a prayer that God loves to answer? Outside of praying for salvation, I think he especially loves to answer those prayers where we ask for wisdom. In Ephesians 1:16-19, Paul writes:
“I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
I love that Paul says he “keeps asking” so that we “may know him better”. That sounds like wisdom might be near the top of the list of things we are to pray for. When we ask God for wisdom, he gives it — “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” James 1:5
Prayer is our weapon. It wins battles that are being fought in the unseen realm. The Bible tells us that we don’t wrestle with flesh and blood, but with principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places.
How do we fight against such things? PRAYER! PRAYER! PRAYER!
So let’s seek the face of God together over these next three weeks. And let’s watch as He does the miraculous things that only He can do in our church body here at DaySpring and in the ministries that our people are involoved in — as our mission statement says — “in this community and around the world!”