We have been thinking about prayer this morning. I want to focus on how we can be involved in prayer.
Our reading was of a very famous prayer, called the Lord’s prayer. It came about because Jesus friends saw him praying and asking him to teach them to pray. They wanted to be involved in prayer, and Jesus gave them a way by teaching them this prayer.
First words of the prayer:
“Our Father” – it involves all of us. It’s not “my Father”, it’s “our Father”. The first word reminds us, even if we’re praying it on our own, that prayer is something we do in community, with all those others who are praying
Last word of a prayer?
Amen.
What does this mean?
It shows that we are all involved in prayer.
But, if we’re going to say we agree at the end of a prayer, it helps if we listen.
How many ears have we got? How many mouths?
When we’re talking with our friends, sometimes we can be so busy thinking about what we want to say, that we don’t actually listen to what they’re saying. We have our best conversations with our friends when we listen at least as much as we talk. That’s when we’re truly involved, because we’re open to what someone is saying to us changing us. It’s the same with prayer. For prayer to be a true conversation in which we’re really involved, then listening is important. We listen to other people, and we listen to God.
So, that’s how our ears can be involved in prayer. But what about our mouths? How can our mouths be involved in prayer?
I guess the first way is the obvious way – we can say prayers – we can talk to God. The funny thing is, we can talk to God inside our heads as well, and that’s just as good. When we talk to God it can involve our mouths, but it doesn’t have to. Sometimes we just want to sit in silence with God, which can be just as much prayer as anything else.
There are other ways that our mouths can help us to be involved in prayer, ways in which they are definitely needed. The first is in offering to pray for other people. We definitely need our mouths for that. We also need our eyes to see when they might need it, and our ears to hear when they might appreciate it, but then we need our mouths to offer to pray.
The second way in which our mouths are needed to be involved in prayer is in asking other people to pray for us. Asking someone to pray for you might be a bit scary, we might feel vulnerable, or that we don’t like people knowing our business, but it can also be a great gift of encouragement both to them and to us.
So, we can say Amen to be involved in prayer. We can use our eyes and ears and mouths to be involved in prayer.
We can pray anywhere – we can pray at home, at school, at college, at work, walking the dog. We can pray on our own or with others.
As I was thinking about this morning, I was struck by how many opportunities we have to get involved in prayer, how many different ways that there are of talking with God, that fit our different personalities and individual relationships with God. It seems to me that this is seen in the huge number of ways we have of getting involved in prayer in our church community as well. Just to mention some of them:
Prayer Ministry Team
Intercessions
Prayer Chain
Notice Sheet Prayers
Prayer Calendar
Morning Prayer
Tuesday evening prayer group
Prayer in small groups – Whatsapp
Prayer in young church groups
Our Father loves to talk with us. Jesus taught us to pray. The Holy Spirit continues to teach us to pray. We have the amazing privilege of being invited to talk with the Creator of the universe, let’s take every opportunity to respond to that invitation and get involved in prayer. Amen.
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