Amazing Grace Christian Church in Tacoma, Washington

Prayer - A Challenge and a Blessing

One of the most difficult challenges we face as Christians centers around how we lovingly support one another.   What form does this support take?   We can be nice to each other, a form of love, or we can volunteer to help out in some ministry around the church, or we can work with another who is in need.   And these are important ways to support each other.

But I would challenge you with this.   If you are not regularly praying for those around you, then maybe your support is not as effective as you think it might be.   This because prayer is just about the most important endeavor that you can undertake as a Christian.   Let me state this slightly differently, prayer is the best and highest thing that you can do for someone else.

Also, prayer provides you with your biggest blessing.   You see, prayer connects you to God and keeps you there.

To this end we attempt to pray for all of those we know.   Not only when they are in need but also when life goes well for them.   Our prayers tend to be typical in this respect.   But there are challenges.

The first challenge is to be consistent with your prayer.   Do you pray every day?   This usually works best when you can reserve at least one time a day to come before God in prayer.

The second challenge is to be real in your prayer.   Realizing that this person, Aunt Millie for instance, needs your prayer support right now brings some urgency into the equation.   This is no longer a laundry list of prayer but a real life need that you bring before God.

The third challenge is to remain humble in your prayer.   God is sovereign, we are not.   When we pray for God's will to be done, we realize that this may not be what we want.   Our faith can slip when these two collide.   Humility allows us to accept God's will.

The final challenge is to be a servant in your prayer.   We become servants when we set aside our own desires for the needs of others.   God not only wants us to become leaders within the church, to grow and to mature, but He also wants us to be servants within the church.   And thus our faithful, humble prayers for each other become but one aspect of this servanthood.