So, yesterday a Facebook and text message arrived in front of me. A friend asked if I would like to show up at a prayer time this morning at 6:00. At the church.
Well, I was going to be at the church anyways, so what is a few hours earlier. Of course, when winter light doesn’t appear until 8:30 . . .
At the same time, I have been working (said in the positive sense) on understanding and applying prayer in my life. In October I spent a week of personal retreat – one day especially devoted to prayer and fasting. I also picked up, at that time, a startlingly green notebook (which I can’t lose) to use to journal prayer requests. And I started to pray for “the fives”. Each month I pray specifically for those in leadership in ministry (I started with five – and renew the list each month – right now the list is over 15 and growing).
So, the idea of prayer was not out of my mind – in fact, quite there. On Sunday, our Associate Pastor asked for people to show up for prayer the next day at 6:00 in the morning. Six people showed. And they decided to also pray on Thursday at 6:00. I think there is a movement about to happen here!
The format was simple. Assign a prayer request to each person. Not a lot of explanation, just pray! Then, the whole group prayed out loud together until things died down (and they just do!). Then go around the circle and assign new requests. Today we prayed for church leadership, other churches in town, for our community, for the rural municipality around Kindersley, for missionaries, for those sitting in the circle. In 40 minutes we covered a large amount of prayer points.
God loves to hear from us. And in turn we will hear from God. I wonder what the coming days and months will hold?