Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Prayer

This afternoon I was walking in the old sanctuary, praying through the church requests from the last few weeks. After finishing, noticed that many of the requests were neither personal nor for the direct nuclear family - rather, for external family, friends, missionaries and the like.

Only six of the 24 were directly personal, 11 of the 24 for the immediate family.

This concerns me a bit.

Not that we shouldn't pray for relatives & friends, nor share those requests with others. Certainly we should.

Rather, we should be able to share personal requests - if not with the whole congregation, at least with the staff & elders.

This list is from the past couple of months - are we truly to believe that our congregation only averages one personal request worth sharing weekly? Or is it more likely that we are shy about sharing - concerned with how others will view us - concerned that the information could be used against us - concerned about vulnerability and transparency in general?

In addition, 18 of the 24 requests were for health issues. Again, it is important to pray about health issues. But do we not have spiritual, emotional, relational and other issues that need prayer?

Perhaps sharing personal requests across the congregation - or even with our leadership - is a bit intimidating. But please, allow me to encourage you to share personal requests with those you can trust, or feel free to call/email me with them. "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."

And I will try to do the same.

2 comments:

Qtpies7 said...

Hmm, I guess there are "big" things and "little" things in our minds. Or maybe people have close friends praying with them about things.

I don't want to bombard anyone with a million little prayer requests, lol.
But, since you are needing more things to pray about....
We'd love prayer for our new business, we have a goal of it taking the place of Donnie's job in a year, about 10 more months from now.
Drew will be leaving in August and he doesn't have a "job" with the Air Force yet. We are praying for God's direction and guidance in what comes along.
My health is still up in the air, the whole fainting/dizzy/migraines thing. I will soon have an MRI, but not sure when. (I am feeling a ton better, though!)

Canoearoo said...

I'm praying for you qt!