A Time For Prayer – by Paul Gilbertson

Prayer has come up in some conversations lately, and it is not an issue we should or can ignore. As we saw last week in Pastor Tony’s message and as we see throughout Jesus’s ministry, prayer is not only the center point; it is the point. We each need to take time to pray alone and with each other, and let God handle what we put at His feet. As a body, we see God working and answering our prayers. We have a group of people going on a mission trip to help finish an orphanage that will help the least of us and with all of the missionaries we know and support we need to keep them in our prayers constantly.

I hope these thoughts cause us to make prayer a priority.

Prayer is a beautiful thing so why do I struggle with it sometimes? The struggles I have had with prayer are because I feel I am poor with words and my thoughts tend to wander. I feel that the words I speak are not adequate enough for God. How I have been so wrong. God is not looking for some elegant speech, but a heart-felt surrendering of one’s own soul. It should be just a conversation with my Creator. My struggles are getting better and I find myself talking to God more and more every day and I love it.

Romans 8:26-27 says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

Prayer has been on a lot of peoples’ hearts at New Life lately. As the body grows so do the prayer concerns. The great thing with a growing family is there are more family members to pray for those needs. We all need our time alone to get on our hands and knees with our heads bowed and talk to the Father one on one. We also need to come together as a family and pray for each other. There are burdens in our lives that we cannot face by ourselves so we need to turn and reach out to our brothers and sisters in Christ to give an encouraging word, a shoulder to cry on, or just to have a listening ear. I think just as important we need to rejoice in the praises of what the Lord has done in our lives to encourage others.

Psalm 138:1-2 says, “I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise; 2I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.”