We have been thinking about prayer this morning. I want to focus on how we can be involved in prayer. <\/p>\n
Our reading was of a very famous prayer, called the Lord\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
First words of the prayer:<\/p>\n
\u201cOur Father\u201d \u2013 it involves all of us. It\u2019s not \u201cmy Father\u201d, it\u2019s \u201cour Father\u201d. The first word reminds us, even if we\u2019re praying it on our own, that prayer is something we do in community, with all those others who are praying<\/p>\n
Last word of a prayer?<\/p>\n
Amen.<\/p>\n
What does this mean?<\/p>\n
It shows that we are all involved in prayer. <\/p>\n
But, if we\u2019re going to say we agree at the end of a prayer, it helps if we listen.
\nHow many ears have we got? How many mouths? <\/p>\n
When we\u2019re talking with our friends, sometimes we can be so busy thinking about what we want to say, that we don\u2019t actually listen to what they\u2019re saying. We have our best conversations with our friends when we listen at least as much as we talk. That\u2019s when we\u2019re truly involved, because we\u2019re open to what someone is saying to us changing us. It\u2019s the same with prayer. For prayer to be a true conversation in which we\u2019re really involved, then listening is important. We listen to other people, and we listen to God. <\/p>\n
So, that\u2019s how our ears can be involved in prayer. But what about our mouths? How can our mouths be involved in prayer?<\/p>\n
I guess the first way is the obvious way \u2013 we can say prayers \u2013 we can talk to God. The funny thing is, we can talk to God inside our heads as well, and that\u2019s just as good. When we talk to God it can involve our mouths, but it doesn\u2019t have to. Sometimes we just want to sit in silence with God, which can be just as much prayer as anything else. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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\u2019t like people knowing our business, but it can also be a great gift of encouragement both to them and to us. <\/p>\n
So, we can say Amen to be involved in prayer. We can use our eyes and ears and mouths to be involved in prayer.<\/p>\n
We can pray anywhere \u2013 we can pray at home, at school, at college, at work, walking the dog. We can pray on our own or with others. <\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
Prayer Ministry Team
\nIntercessions
\nPrayer Chain
\nNotice Sheet Prayers
\nPrayer Calendar
\nMorning Prayer
\nTuesday evening prayer group
\nPrayer in small groups \u2013 Whatsapp
\nPrayer in young church groups<\/p>\n
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\u2019s take every opportunity to respond to that invitation and get involved in prayer. Amen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s prayer. It came about because Jesus friends saw him praying and asking him to teach them to pray. They wanted to be involved in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[431],"tags":[159,71],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellington","tag-luke-111-4","tag-prayer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1023,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions\/1023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}