I love group prayer – listening and speaking with God amongst other believers. Recently, I rejoined a prayer group that I attended about nine years ago. Although many of the faces have changed, I was pleased to find there is still a group of saints seeking God’s will in their lives and the lives of those around them. What a blessing it is to seek and wait upon the Lord together.
In lifting others up in prayer, we seek their well-being by God’s grace and power. The prayer would have no effect at all if God were not pleased to hear our hearts and respond to our pleas. The power in prayer is God. It is God’s grace to respond with love and healing and wondrous miracles to our requests.
He is the power of prayer.
I was reading Zechariah and came across a verse in Chapter 7 wherein Zechariah was explaining to the Jews who had returned from exile in Babylon why they were sent out of the promised land in the first place.
“They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry. When I (God) called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen.”
To me it is a horribly frightening thought that God might not listen when I call out in prayer to Him. After doing some research of the Scriptures, I found this wasn’t the only time that God had called out to his people, and they had not heeded His words.
In Proverbs 1:27-28, I read, “When calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. Then they will call tome, but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me.”
There were at least seven other Scriptures where God reached out to His people, those He loved, and He was rejected. The knowledge that God’s love is so great that He eventually forgave them even after this rejection makes my time of prayer that much sweeter, but it also makes me very aware that my heart must be right with God when I seek Him.
I cannot praise my heavenly Father in song and prayer and think that He will ignore my sin. He knows all.
He sees my sin and if I am not confessing the error of my ways and turning away from it, then God, even with all His marvelous patience, will weary of me attempting to praise Him or to pray with a filthy heart.
In one Psalm, King David said to God, “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”
My heavenly Father wants me to approach His throne with prayer and with a clean heart. I know that on my best day, I am unworthy to address Him and can only do so because of His mercy and that Jesus has cleansed me from my sins.
My heart must be clean before God before I can ask for anything but forgiveness in prayer. I need to remember that God is God, and I am one of the sheep of His pasture. The posture or position of prayer is that I am subordinate to Holy God, and I acknowledge it and I am now seeking His gracious heart.
Often in our prayer group, one of us will pray first that if any of us have sin in our hearts, we ask to be forgiven, so that we can all come before our Father with clean and contrite hearts.
I want to pray God’s will always. I want to know God’s heart and when He brings a person to mind for me to lift in prayer, then I know that I am joining God in His will.
This is often affirmed in our prayer group by others joining in the prayer in their heart or by verbally agreeing.
What a joy it is to live knowing that at any moment – and indeed every moment – I can speak with my heavenly Father about what is on my mind or in my heart. I ask Him questions about everything, especially understanding Scripture. God leads me on the right path always. Sometimes that path is through verses and commentary that explain that which I cannot otherwise know. I am just not that smart.
Once, in a Bible study I attended, the speaker said that she prayed, “God make me smarter than I am.”
I find that prayer very helpful! I need God’s ways and thoughts because, as God said to Isaiah, “My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
So, I pray, “God please make me smarter than I am. Let me know Your ways that I may follow in them.”
Prayer groups are a marvelous means to grow in our faith and in our understanding of God, a way to make new friends, and are such a joy to participate in with those who love God as I do.
If you have never ventured out to join a prayer group with your church or any Christian group, I suggest that this be the time you consider trying it out. If you are like me, you will find group prayer is a marvelous way to add a very bright and holy hour in your week.
ED. NOTE: Amy Patsch writes from Ocean City. Email her at writerGoodGod@gmail.com.
