Gathering the People

The Team You Need to Pray With

The greatest outpouring of God’s power is found in the Gospels; we are still measuring the impact of Christ to Earth.  But the story of the greatest disbursement of God’s power in human history is found in the book of Acts.  Never before had so many humans, from so many places, been the means to the astounding activity of God.  The outpouring of the Spirit of God brought forth love, sacrificial sharing, healing, miracles, and boldness in unprecedented occurrences.  And almost every occurrence was accompanied by the prayers of many.  In light of the 34 references to prayer in Acts we should ask: are we calling on God with the frequency or intensity of the first believers?

I think we know the answer and I believe we need to pray at 3 new levels.

1. We Need Prayer with the Public.  We are used to congregational calls to pray.  But those early believers seem to have taken prayer outside the safety of their private closets or closed meetings and made it a community event.  We need no bounds on who we pray with, where we pray, and who we ask to join us in prayer.  We don’t need to know if they are a praying person, we just need to invite people to pray with us.  The invite itself will surface others you are longing to partner with or surface those who need prayer.  Either way your invitation is making space for the work of God in their lives.  We need very large prayer teams for the breadth of darkness and hopelessness that so many of us are encountering.  So let’s cast the net widely.  Let’s use our social media platforms and our gatherings and personal invites to assemble by name a team who want to be prayer warriors and ask God unashamedly for his blessings.  Imagine if prayer was not a hidden work of the church but rather a public sector resource where anyone felt they were welcome.​ 
2. We need personal prayer teams.  This is something that very few Christian leaders have.  Yet we see Jesus assemble a personal prayer team at Gethsemane.  We see Paul asking for others to pray for his boldness.  In our time, Christian leaders are not asking for enough specific prayer for their challenges!  How long has it been since a leader said to you: I need you to pray for me so I can overcome _________?  This should be a normal weekly rhythm for us.      
3. We need God as our first team member.  Our prayers go to the very throne of God.  (This in itself is a staggering achievement.)  And there God is for us.  Those prayers arrive pleasantly and sweetly, like an alpine forest after a rain.  God finds our prayers alluring and is eager to dispatch his angels and his servants for our needs and to engage the spiritual battle.  God is on our side.  He is the first member on our prayer team.  Do we still believe that God changes things?  Do we still believe that prayer should be the first response to any daily challenge?  As the Kellogg’s Corn Flake commercial said, perhaps we too in our prayers need to “taste it again … for the very first time.”

Bruce Bates, Director of Coaching