Prayer Day
Tomorrow, May 1, is the annual National Day of Prayer. Every year, the first Thursday in May, our country sets aside one day to pray and ask God's blessing on our leaders and our country.
Of course, every day should be a day of prayer...but thankfully, at least once a year, we stop for a brief moment to acknowledge our dependence on God. Or at least some of us do. Tomorrow, we as a community will gather at the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast to pray, and we will gather on the City Hall lawn at noon to pray. But those gatherings will be a relatively small fraction of our entire community and even of those who would be able to come.
In the Scriptures, when people gathered to pray, two things (in my mind) stand out about those gatherings. First of all, the Scriptures says all the people of God gathered. All. Was it every single solitary person? Doubtful, but it was a big enough group that the writer calls it "all." At the least, every tribe, clan and family was represented. If history holds true, when we gather at noon tomorrow, we'll have ten or twelve churches represented...out of the 50 or so that make up our community. What will it take for all the people of God to gather?
The second thing I notice is that the people in the Bible don't generally gather just to pray and ask for God's blessing. They gather to repent, to beg for God's forgiveness, and even to just wait upon God to move. Again, if history is any indication, we'll do most of the talking tomorrow, and if silence happens, it will be uncomfortable. Rather than waiting on God to speak, we'll shuffle our feet, look up and wonder who is next to speak in our prayer circle (and I'm as guilty of that as the next person, believe me!).
What might happen, on this National Day of Prayer, if we ALL gathered and we took time to REPENT (really repent) of our brokenness and if we WAITED on God to speak, to move, to make his presence apparent? Because he will be there. He has promised he would be. It's up to us to pay attention and to realize he's there. Will we quit talking long enough to sense him near?
Even if you can't join a gathering for prayer tomorrow, I hope it will be a day when you seek God, cry out to him, repent and wait...and that such a pattern will become regular in your life and in mine.
Of course, every day should be a day of prayer...but thankfully, at least once a year, we stop for a brief moment to acknowledge our dependence on God. Or at least some of us do. Tomorrow, we as a community will gather at the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast to pray, and we will gather on the City Hall lawn at noon to pray. But those gatherings will be a relatively small fraction of our entire community and even of those who would be able to come.
In the Scriptures, when people gathered to pray, two things (in my mind) stand out about those gatherings. First of all, the Scriptures says all the people of God gathered. All. Was it every single solitary person? Doubtful, but it was a big enough group that the writer calls it "all." At the least, every tribe, clan and family was represented. If history holds true, when we gather at noon tomorrow, we'll have ten or twelve churches represented...out of the 50 or so that make up our community. What will it take for all the people of God to gather?
The second thing I notice is that the people in the Bible don't generally gather just to pray and ask for God's blessing. They gather to repent, to beg for God's forgiveness, and even to just wait upon God to move. Again, if history is any indication, we'll do most of the talking tomorrow, and if silence happens, it will be uncomfortable. Rather than waiting on God to speak, we'll shuffle our feet, look up and wonder who is next to speak in our prayer circle (and I'm as guilty of that as the next person, believe me!).
What might happen, on this National Day of Prayer, if we ALL gathered and we took time to REPENT (really repent) of our brokenness and if we WAITED on God to speak, to move, to make his presence apparent? Because he will be there. He has promised he would be. It's up to us to pay attention and to realize he's there. Will we quit talking long enough to sense him near?
Even if you can't join a gathering for prayer tomorrow, I hope it will be a day when you seek God, cry out to him, repent and wait...and that such a pattern will become regular in your life and in mine.
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