We began our joint thinking about the place of church-wide prayer yesterday in 1 Timothy 2:1-2. (If you missed the sermon you can listen to it here.) Among other lessons about prayer we saw the priority of prayer.

“First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made…”

When it came time for the Apostle Paul to begin touching on a list of specific issues in the church he began with the issue of prayer. “First of all”

Most of us, after we become a Christian, have an untaught sense that prayer is important. It is, after all, the way we talk with God. Real Christianity is a relationship with God through Christ. It is a personal relationship. As in any personal relationship it grows through communication. We communicate with God through prayer.

We sense this personally. But sometimes we need to be taught that this is also a group issue - it is something that must be made a priority in us all as a body of believers. Just as we seek God in prayer personally, so we ought to seek Him together as a church.

Lesson from Africa

When I first became a Christian I was taught the importance of having a “Quiet Time.” That is a name some of us use for getting daily time in the Bible and in prayer. The assumption, the teaching, was that this time in the Bible and in prayer was personal. I was taught that I needed to get personal time with God every day.

Now, I believe that. It is important and I can’t live without it. But, let me let our African brothers and sisters in the Lord stretch your thinking a bit.

There are places in Africa where the church gathers every morning - early - before the people go out to the fields to work. They gather in their simple church buildings and pray together. Someone reads Scripture. Someone shares some thoughts from the verses that were just read. And then they all pray together. When done (and usually there is some good singing that goes on too!) they then begin their day.

What have they just done? They’ve had a group Quiet Time! They met the Lord together. They prayed together.

Is there something wrong with that? Some of us from Western countries who have had the importance of personal time with God stressed to us over and over begin to ask questions.

“But, do those Africans that have the “group Quite Time” get personal time too?”  Well, some probably do and some probably don’t.

“But, does time with God in the group ‘count’ as a Quite Time with God?” When you put that question in black and white it looks a little silly doesn’t it? But it is actually what people think.

Time with God is time with God. Time with God, in one sense, is always personal - whether you are alone as you pray or with others. It is still you and God - so it is personal. But when that personal communion with God takes place within the body of believers something special can take place.

We in Western countries are programmed by our cultures to miss an important element of the Christian life. That element? Praying together.

Something special can happen, and often does happen, when God’s people gather to pray.

Let’s move forward and discover what that something special is!