New Preaching Series Begins Feb. 1st
I’ve encountered all sorts of people throughout my now 20+ year journey of living as a Christian and then as a pastor. One thing I’ve seen over and over is that people don’t need to believe in God to be grateful to receive an offer of prayer.
Not every person on planet Earth prays. But the vast majority of the people I’ve met, regardless of what they believe have some sort of prayer practice, even if its just looking heavenward and shouting “help!” from their knees to an unknown Other in moments of crisis when the whole world feels like its crashing down. Many global faiths beyond Christianity have practices of prayer too.
I suspect this is because deep down its hard to ignore that there’s more to reality than just the material world we can see. The Scriptures make this point from their first words as Genesis 1 begins, “In the beginning GOD.” Not, in the beginning stuff. In the beginning…a spiritual presence. A world of spirit from which material existence emerged. The rest of the Story of the Bible goes on to show story after story of people engaging this spiritual world and spiritual presence of God. That presence becomes personalized in Israel’s God, Yahweh, and then takes on flesh in the Person of Jesus. Revelation, the last book in the Bible, tells us through the words of John of Patmos, that when we are struggling and suffering now, if we could pull back the veil separating the material world we can see from the spiritual world we can’t, what we would see in that spiritual world is JESUS: the Good Shepherd, the King of Kings, pursuing us with His love even now, contending for our best, desiring to draw us back into right relationship with Himself.
In the wake of school shootings and instances of racial violence in the public square over the past decade in America, there has been increasing rhetoric decrying the value of “thoughts and prayers.” It is of course important in the wake of these tragedies for followers of Jesus to move BEYOND simply thinking and praying and toward actions of change to enact greater justice and righteousness in our society. But “prayer” is only a problem here, if our conception of what prayer is, is simply a pious personal feel-good experience or a pattern of religious performance where we give lip service to caring for others, but do not genuinely draw them compassionately into our hearts and minds.
Prayer as the Scriptures understand it, on the other hand, is so much more! Prayer is the language of the Kingdom of God; the vehicle of intimacy and connection between us and our Creator. It was blessed by God with invitation and power to direct our cries to heaven’s ears. Prayer is not a pothole hotline where we call in our need and sit idly by while angels meet it. When we pray for things, our hearts by necessity get involved. We commune with Jesus and gain a better appreciation for what He desires to see happen in the world. He supplies us with power through His Holy Spirit to become agents of His heavenly action. Indeed, as has at times been said, “if you ask God to move a mountain, don’t be surprised if he asks you to pick up a shovel.”
The net net is the Christian must recognize that prayer is powerful because it connects us with the God who created all things, the God who is sovereign not only over the material world but also spiritual reality. We live in a world made up of more than just what we can see, and so, to fully and most appropriately navigate that world, we need spiritual tools as well as material ones. Prayer is thus God’s equipment He graciously gives us to engage Him and navigate life WITH Him, participating in His mission, righteousness, justice, and will.
And yet, prayer for most of us is not easy. Some of us have only been taught that prayer is one thing: asking God for stuff. Some of us have had wonderful seasons where our prayer life felt dynamic and God seemed close, yet currently we’re walking through a wilderness of dry prayer where God feels distant.
And so our church begins an 8-week preaching series entitled “Praying on the Way | Practicing Prayer with Jesus, Scripture, & The Church.” In this series, we will discover what Scripture says about the spiritual world, and learn about 7 different practices of prayer modeled by Jesus and demonstrated throughout the Scriptures, to equip us with tools to cultivate intimacy with God in every season of life—the good and the hard. These practices are Praise, Lament, Petition, Intercession, Thanksgiving, Confession, and Oblation. Each week, we’ll learn about a prayer practice, and DO it together during the prayers of the people. Then we’ll discuss more in weekly small groups. There will also be a beautiful devotional guide available during worship starting Sunday 2/1 so you can follow along throughout the series and dive deeper into your personal practice of each type of prayer throughout the week.
Our hope is that these weeks will broaden all of our understandings of what prayer is, that each of us will have new experiences of prayer, and that we will discover new tools and new language to connect with God and cultivate intimacy in our relationship with him both when things are good and when things are hard.
We’re excited to share this journey with you church. Come and invite your friends and families to join us Sundays Feb. 1st – March 22nd.
- Fr. William