Prayer: Introducing Prayer Training at Highbbury

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Introducing Prayer Training at Highbbury

Becky Hartwell, our Pastoral Assistant, writes ...

I want to focus a little on prayer.

September and the beginning of October will be a focus on prayer for the church. There will be prayer training, there will be talks on Sunday mornings about prayer and there will even be a 24 hour prayer event. Some of you might wonder why I have been so keen on getting involved in prayer at Highbury.

I have been very fortunate to have people praying for me since before I was born and there are times when I feel my survival has been because of this. Prayer can transform people, areas and churches. Speaking to God is a frightening thought when we realise that’s what prayer is. But it doesn’t have to be daunting and intimidating because God is waiting to hear from us.

God has given us such an amazing gift of being able to talk to him at any time and in any place. We can talk to those around us every day but never truly talk of our struggles or pain but with God we can reveal our innermost secrets. He loves us and longs to hear us speak to Him. And sometimes we can sit with God and not say a word and He still understands our pain. We can talk for hours about our day or bring our happiest moments and He listens. Prayer is difficult, it can be challenging to communicate with someone whom you may not hear a reply and is not sitting in front of you. So it is good to meet together and to discuss ways to develop this part of our relationship with God.

The aim of the Prayer Training is to encourage us all in our prayer lives, to open us up to a relationship with God through prayer. It is for everyone, from those who have been praying for years to those who are only just learning how to.

The training will be on three Tuesdays in September: 16th, 23rd and 30th, starting at 8.00pm and finishing by 9.30pm. If you can only attend one or two then please come to those. There will be notes available for people to take home from the course or to pick up in the following weeks.
Let us get excited about prayer, about what God can do with our prayers. Let us pray for the prayer training and all that will happen in the Autumn term.

Phillipians 4 v 6 - Don't worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God.

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Prayer at Highbury

It is the most natural thing in the world. It is so simple any of us can do it. And we all do!

And yet from time to time, my guess is, all of us would love to be better at it.

If that’s how we do feel, we are not alone.

The very first followers of Jesus wanted to learn how to be more effective in the time they spent doing it.

It’s not for nothing that we think of them as ‘disciples’. A ‘disciple’ is simply someone who is keen to learn.

They were.

We need to be!

At least, if we want to be followers of Jesus and ‘disciples’ of his.

‘Lord, teach us to pray,’ was the plea of those first disciples.
They had seen how important prayer was to Jesus. Time and again he would take himself off to a quiet place simply to pray.
Read through Luke’s gospel and you get the feel there is a quiet rhythm to the life and ministry of Jesus. He sustained his active ‘doing’ ministry by constantly withdrawing to be alone in prayer.

Action and withdrawal.

The disciples could see that it was the prayer that sustained all that he did.

And they wanted to learn to pray more effectively.
They wanted to be taught to pray.

It is a couple of years since Adrian Stanley challenged us at a Deacons’ meeting whether we were a ‘praying’ church.
As we allocated responsibilities to each of the Deacons he it was who suggested that one Deacon should be set apart to take responsibility for developing the prayer life of the church.
For the next couple of years he served us wonderfully in developing that work.

He introduced our Prayer Chain giving people the opportunity to ring Ruth Adams and set in motion prayers for a particular concern.

I for one have used that in my own personal concerns and have found it to be one of the most treasured parts of our church life. If you would like to be part of that Prayer Chain give Ruth a ring and she will add your name to her list of those she will ring.

And if you want to pass round a prayer concern give Ruth a ring too!

Ever since that time we have meet together in our Prayer Parlour from 10-00am before the morning service.

Again, I can say from my own personal experience how much I have come to cherish that short time of prayer in preparation for our morning service.

If you haven’t already done so, do join us!

As the time of our Annual Meeting drew closer Adrian anticipated that he would be leaving the Diaconate and he told us that he would not be serving on the Diaconate again, even if he were in due course invited to stand once again for election.
So it was that he drew up a paper outlining the responsibilities he had undertaken as our ‘Prayer’ Deacon. He then shared with us something of his vision for the development of the prayer life of the church.

In a strangely moving way it was almost as if Adrian sensed what was going to happen.

Lorraine Gasside has taken up the responsibility of Prayer Deacon, and with help from Cecille Whitmore and Becky Hartwell has shared Adrian’s vision and more with us all.
In addition to the Prayer Chain, Cecille will now forward requests for prayer by email. If you would like to join her email list then you can contact her at cheddarlodge@hotmail.co.uk

From 10-00am on Saturday 4th October until 10-00am on Sunday 5th October we are going to share in a 24 hour time of prayer as a church family. Watch out for more information coming soon!

After the morning service from that Sunday we will give people the opportunity to come to the front of the church and join someone to share in prayer.

In doing that we want to share together as a church family and do as those disciples did long ago, learn about praying and prayer.

That means that on Sundays through September we are going to explore prayer in the teaching part of our services.

And then on three Tuesday evenings, 16th, 23rd and 30th September we shall do a short course at church exploring prayer together.

In those sessions we will also prepare those who wish to share in that prayer ministry after the morning service.

Prayer

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Introducing Prayer Training at Highbbury

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