Why don't we pray?  Why don't we meet for prayer more often than we do?  No doubt lots of reasons will come to mind " busyness, lack of faith, pride, fear.

I know that I have a "natural' resistance to prayer meetings. When they are announced the flesh shrinks back and we think of reasons why we cannot attend, or can only attend for a little while. Organising a prayer meeting seems so hard that we don't even begin. Lethargy sets in. And even when we start, keeping it going is really hard!

At the moment I am studying the early chapters of the book of Acts (with help from David Peterson's magnificent new commentary). Several things are clear from the account of those early days of the church. The first is that they talked about the Lord Jesus and called on people to be saved. They trusted in God to call people to himself through his word.  After all, it is the work of God to take and use his word to call people to himself.

Second, they met together to pray " they had prayer meetings! I suspect that they did not have to exhort and cajole people to pray. They prayed out of the sheer wonder of the gospel and out of a profound sense of need. They prayed especially for boldness in speaking the word of God.

They prayed that the Holy Spirit would give them such boldness. They prayed because they looked out into their community and saw that so many people needed to come to know Christ.

Third, they demonstrably lived for Christ and for one another. In their case, this meant simply sharing what they had with each other. The marks of that early church were faith in Jesus, love for him, for one another and hope in his return. It was a biblical church and it was a praying church.

I am writing this in the midst of a great prayer meeting. The Chapter House is crowded with people calling on the Lord for our city and our nation. We are not so much praying for our churches, but for the mission field by which we are surrounded.

I can't tell you how much joy there is in the room, for that is the strange fact " we find every excuse possible not to pray and not to meet for prayer, but when we do, the Lord's presence is manifest and the Lord's people build each other up. More importantly, we have the Lord's specific promise to hear and respond to our prayers in his name.

Next time we have this opportunity to join together in prayer " say "No' to the evil one who always wishes to frustrate our prayers, and readily join together to call on the name of our great Lord!
(At the end of our prayer meeting we decided to do it again on August 28 in the Chapter House from 10am to 2pm.) 

I plan to be there. Why don't you join us?