COV LIFE BLOG

The Church Prays Together – 1 Chronicles 29:10-13

God’s Word, the voice of the Church, and our prayers belong together. So we must now speak of common prayer. “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 18:19). There is no part of common devotions that raises such serious difficulties and trouble as does common prayer, for here we must ourselves begin to speak. We have heard God’s Word, and we have been permitted to join in the hymn of the Church; but now we are to pray to God as a fellowship, and this prayer must really be our word, ourprayer for this day, for our work, for our fellowship, for the particular needs and sins that oppress us in common, for the persons who are committed to our care.

Or should we really not pray for ourselves at all; is the desire for common prayer with our own lips and in our own words a forbidden thing? No matter what objections there may be, the fact simply remains that where Christians want to live together under the Word of God they may and they should pray together to God in their own words. They have common petitions, common thanks, common intercessions to bring to God, and they should do so joyfully and confidently. Here all fear of one another, all timidity about praying freely in one’s own words in the presence of others may be put aside where in all simplicity and soberness the common, brotherly prayer is lifted to God by one of the brethren….

It is in fact the most normal thing in the common Christian life to pray together.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Heart Preparation
Read 1 Chronicles 29:10-13 and consider Bonhoeffer’s quote above. Do you regularly pray with others in our church body? How can you begin to build a greater culture of praying together in our body?

Song of the Week
How Rich A Treasure We Possess by Matt Boswell