St Luke's Church Eccleshill - Articles from "The Link"

Praying in practice

Seeing as God raised Jesus from the dead, it logically follows that God is the sort to get involved in our world and change things for the better. And therefore it’s worth praying. Maybe he will say no, and maybe he will answer our prayer by changing us so that we are more able to put up with what we cannot change. But, maybe he will change the world and answer our problem that way.

When I shared a house with other students, they sometimes got on my nerves. Often I wouldn’t pray, and often the problem persisted. But when I did finally turn to prayer and ask God to sort out the problem, I generally found something happened. Sometimes God would tell me to be a bit more charitable. But quite often he would make the others change, and even apologise.

At St Luke’s we are trying to focus on prayer. For many years we have prayed in public in church services. But when you suddenly have a crisis in your family, you can’t always wait until next Sunday: you want to ask God to help now.

So we have a “prayer chain”: you can ring Linda on 621298 and ask her to pray (giving as many or as few details as you wish). She’ll pray and then she’ll ring the next person: the next person will pray and then ring the next, and so on and so forth, and you’ll get the instant (confidential) prayers of a group of people. Their commitment is just to pray that once, although several of them do in fact pray lots of times for the requests.

Another way of praying we’ve started is to have “prayer partners” available each Sunday. They go and sit on the front seats near the organ, after the 9.30am or 10.30am service for 10 or 15 minutes, and if you want prayer for something you can just go and sit with them and they’ll listen to you and pray with you or for you. There will be no fuss or embarrassment or strings attached, and you can say as much or as little as you want about what’s on your heart.

And finally, we’ve introduced a “prayer board” - we originally had it in the church but we’ve moved it to the narthex. You can write your prayer request on a leaf and pin it on the tree on the board, and we’ll check on the requests regularly and pray for them.

Join us in prayer. I think you’ll find what I found: God likes to answer us when we come to him through Jesus.

John Hartley

	*St Luke's Church, Eccleshill - The Link* magazine** The Link is published monthly at 40p (Senior Citizens 35p), and we deliver free within the parish and post copies (at the reader's expense) to those who request it. Please contact us if you would like a free copy for a trial period. June 2009, Page 2.
Home Page. Index of articles: by subject, by date. In this issue: (June 2009) Trinity, Prayer, Question, Song, Chorltons. Other bible topics.	Praying in practice Seeing as God raised Jesus from the dead, it logically follows that God is the sort to get involved in our world and change things for the better. And therefore it’s worth praying. Maybe he will say no, and maybe he will answer our prayer by changing us so that we are more able to put up with what we cannot change. But, maybe he will change the world and answer our problem that way. When I shared a house with other students, they sometimes got on my nerves. Often I wouldn’t pray, and often the problem persisted. But when I did finally turn to prayer and ask God to sort out the problem, I generally found something happened. Sometimes God would tell me to be a bit more charitable. But quite often he would make the others change, and even apologise. At St Luke’s we are trying to focus on prayer. For many years we have prayed in public in church services. But when you suddenly have a crisis in your family, you can’t always wait until next Sunday: you want to ask God to help now. So we have a “prayer chain”: you can ring Linda on 621298 and ask her to pray (giving as many or as few details as you wish). She’ll pray and then she’ll ring the next person: the next person will pray and then ring the next, and so on and so forth, and you’ll get the instant (confidential) prayers of a group of people. Their commitment is just to pray that once, although several of them do in fact pray lots of times for the requests. Another way of praying we’ve started is to have “prayer partners” available each Sunday. They go and sit on the front seats near the organ, after the 9.30am or 10.30am service for 10 or 15 minutes, and if you want prayer for something you can just go and sit with them and they’ll listen to you and pray with you or for you. There will be no fuss or embarrassment or strings attached, and you can say as much or as little as you want about what’s on your heart. And finally, we’ve introduced a “prayer board” - we originally had it in the church but we’ve moved it to the narthex. You can write your prayer request on a leaf and pin it on the tree on the board, and we’ll check on the requests regularly and pray for them. Join us in prayer. I think you’ll find what I found: God likes to answer us when we come to him through Jesus. John Hartley
Top of page.	This web page was last updated on 14th October 2009.