PRAYER CAMP

I wonder why we think that Christians should know instinctively how to have a good prayer life. You know, there isn’t much evidence for that assumption, even Jesus’ own disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray. Most of us are not satisfied with our prayer life. Most of us sense that we can have deeper intimacy with the Lord, be able to hear His voice better, and certainly we would like to see a great flow of power and life in our prayer life. Yet, we don’t approach prayer as something to be learned.

Someone might say, “But prayer is nothing more than communication with God. Why should that be something I need to learn?” I can tell you, after working with people for the last couple of decades, that to assume that we are all natural-born communicators is a huge mistake. Most married couples benefit greatly from a study of good communication skills. If we have this much difficulty communicating with another human being whose eyes we can see, and voice we can hear with the natural ear, why would we assume that two-way communication with God, who is a spirit, would be more natural to us?

Besides, prayer is much more than just two-way communication with God. Certainly that is the foundation of all life-giving prayer, but much of Christian prayer consists of the declaration, or proclamation, of the things that God is revealing to us. In other words, we are seeking to hear or see what is on God’s heart at a particular moment in time, and then to speak that out over our homes, churches, nation or world.

Then, we have to take into account the fact that some prayer is personal and individual, but Jesus made it clear that there is an increased power to prayer when a group of believers prays together in agreement. Knowing this, we need to learn, not only how to develop a strong individual prayer life, but how to harmonize together with others in prayer. All I can say is thank God for the Holy Spirit who is our personal coach, and teaches us to pray.

To that end, we are going to begin to study and practice prayer during our Wednesday night Bible Study. We are going to approach this subject as “Prayer Camp.” We are going to take one or two nuggets of truth about prayer each week. We will study these truths, discuss our various understandings of them, and then “practice” prayer. Our goal will be to coach one another into a more satisfying, effective, and powerful prayer life. I hope you will join us at 7pm on Wednesday evenings for Prayer Camp.