|
After the church retreat on prayer in July, Pastors David and Susan and the retreat participants felt that Great Swamp needed to make prayer more of a central focus of our walk with the Lord. We came up with a variety of suggestions, mostly small steps to help people carry out the prayer ministry of our church and strengthen their own prayer lives.
To this end, I want to highlight the work of the church's prayer chain. Great Swamps prayer chain started at least 15 years ago (as best as anyone can remember!); right now it has 14 members. We email or call each other with prayer requests which are kept in confidence among the members. We invite you to join this vital ministry.
There are lots of ways to get a request on the prayer chain. You can call or email the church phone, drop off a request in the new mailbox outside the glass doors, or fill out a prayer request form Sunday. You don't need to give us the full name of the person. Describing the situation in need of a prayer would be helpful, but isn't necessary. If you give us the full name of the person, we do ask that you first get permission for which you are requesting prayer. With the new HIPPA law and for confidentiality reasons, we need to be careful.
Most important is that we all need to learn to make prayer a priority in our lives. Prayer is our conversation with God. Prayer was Jesus' life line. F. B. Meyer once wrote, "The greatest tragedy in life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer." St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, "Pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." (I Thess. 5:17-18) |
