March 20, 2015
Prayer Solicitation
A Christian blog site encourages
churches to submit their name and prayer needs; and then each Sunday one name
is published and readers are ask to pray for that church. Certainly Paul was a
proponent of soliciting prayers for New Testament churches with whom he worked.
However, most of the requests published on the blog site are for finances,
building expansion and successful ministry outreach events. By comparison, the
seven churches in Revelation had spiritual issues and the Lord instructed John
to not only write down what he (the Lord) said, but also what John observed. It’s
interesting that with all the issues and corrective measures directed at the
seven churches, nowhere does the Lord ask them to pray for one another.
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Gail;
-----When Christians square up to pray I want to go hide in a closet. It isn’t that I have anything against prayer. To the contrary, I treasure prayer. But maybe that’s just it. Often these little “prayer sessions” are more about praying and less about the issues being addressed. At the funeral of a friend who had attended morning Bible studies for several years with a few others and me, a friend who had for several years fought against cancer, which made his funeral all that bigger of a hoo-ha, I looked to crawl into a tiny hole. At the end of this funeral, one of the guys with whom I did morning Bible study rounded us up and informed us of some awry circumstance, I forget now exactly what it was besides trivial and speculative. But it sure needed prayed about, right there at the front of the sanctuary where many people yet lingered in their own conversations. As each in the circle of held hands with plenty of volume to penetrate the furthest corner of the place moaned and groaned out their contribution of rebuff and suggestion of solution regarding some whoever that caused this angst in the first place, I just stood there quietly chastising myself for being willingly drug into such an embarrassment. Nobody had even asked for specifics regarding whatever speculated fuss this particular whoever eventuated. And the mutterings emanating from that circle were as loud as they were ambiguous and uninformed. To me it was obvious this was less a prayer and more an attempt to center stage their presence.
-----But I don’t think the stage is always the point of these little prayer gatherings. I think most of the time they are about communicating with God. Yet I still would rather go hide in a closet as the moans and groans list out all of the situation’s circumstances and details and explanations about how it came about and all its shapes and sizes and colors and smells, like the Lord doesn’t have eyes to see or hasn’t been looking and still won’t look, so it’s gotta be described to Him. And we’re actually entreating for aid a God this feckless as not to be able to see what we’re praying about?
-----I always perceived John as being a very reality minded person, down to earth, full of insight, and always about the matter at hand. I like to think this is why he was referred to so often as Jesus’ beloved disciple, like maybe Jesus was the same way. So, when these two got together to pen out the Book of Revelation, it doesn’t surprise me a bit that they left out any prayers the churches were having for each other as well as any call for them to pray for each other, seeing what those prayers would be like. I think the Lord liked prayer-in-a-closet. And I think the closet should be there virtually when praying with others.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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