"Passionately Seeking & Speaking the Love of Jesus Christ"
Dateline: Phillips West
This Friday will mark our 3rd "Final Friday Fast" and I am very excited for the day to come. The past 2 month's "Triple F's" have been such a blessing. I have found the time to be so sweet, enlightening, and refreshing. At times it seems as though God uses these days to open up the Scriptures and speak very clearly through them.
I do take this day very seriously. As I have mentioned before, I even bought a sackcloth off ebay to wear... I go straight up old-school and Old Testament (however, I do wear a T-shirt over the sackcloth and I do not walk around with sunken cheeks, so I am New Testament as well).
Perhaps God has also given me a hunger for more prayer through this day of fasting. Because one thing that troubles me is that we (we being our churches and denomination) no longer seem to rely on praying together. I know that we have emails, newsletters and such (heck this very email is an example) but we really don't get together to pray anymore and when we do meet, we hardly pray at all. Most of the time we will pray a bit at the start and finish of a meeting and that is about all she wrote. If our meetings were a motion picture we would acknowledge God in the credits (for a brief flash on the screen at the beginning and end of the film, as if He were the just the "producer" of the film although we don't always trust Him in this regard) but we write the screenplay and score, cast the movie, put our pictures on the one-sheet poster, and direct the action on the set. As a result, it looks as though the majority of the work has been done by us and not God. We are the stars not Him...
I am just as responsible for this decline as anyone. Our church used to pray during the prayer meetings and not spend the majority of the hour reading a book about prayer. Our association used to meet twice a month for prayer... then once a month... then not at all. Our church even partnered with other churches for regular prayer. However interest faded and so did the prayer times disappeared. Here is the harsh reality- How can we expect to work together and do God's Great Commission work with people who are not even willing to pray together??? By Biblical standards this would appear to be an exercise in absolute futility.
Now I know there are still remnants out there. We are the only church I have ever attended at which the "the floor is opened" for corporate prayer after the sermon and there is a small group from the TCMBA which meets regularly but shouldn't we be doing more?
First things first. I believe we do not have a healthy corporate prayer live because we do not have healthy personal prayer lives. How about getting on your knees right now, asking God for forgiveness, and commit to prayer without ceasing as a child of God and a member of the Body of Christ.
