Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones, the famous 20th century preacher, was showing some visitors around his church one day, and after a good tour told his guests that he would finish by taking them to the boiler room. They weren’t really interested, but he insisted. “This is where the energy for all the work of the church comes from,” he said. And he opened the doors to show them a gathering of people praying.
Prayer is vital to our own Christian lives and we shrivel and die in our faith without it. But it is also vital in the life of the church because without prayer the church will not stand firm and will not grow.
In prayer we can face the size of our problems but rest in the power of God. In prayer we recognise our weaknesses but rejoice in God’s strength. And in prayer we learn to set our agenda aside and pray ‘Thy will be done.’
As a church we haven’t been very good at praying together, at least not over my time here, and that needs to change. The 7am weekly prayer meetings will continue and we’d love more people to come along. But we also recognise that 7am doesn’t suit everyone, and so from mid-September we will be starting a new monthly prayer meeting from 7:45pm -9pm on a Wednesday evening. To facilitate that, Prayer and Praise will move to a Sunday night and will have a new name!
We will face many challenges over the coming months and years, and so I urge you to book the dates in your diary and come and join us as we pray for God’s will to be done amongst his people, in his Church and throughout his world. (The first six dates are 12th Sept, 10th Oct, 21st Nov, 19th Dec, 16th Jan and 13th Feb.)