Worship - The Prayer of Faith, part 2

The comments below apply to Chapter 16 of Batsell Barrett Baxter's book, The Family of God, and they are supplemented with material from James M. Tolle's book, Prayer.  Chapter 16 of The Family of God is about prayer as a part of Christian worship.

Tolle identifies a practice of the early church in the New Testament that he calls social prayer.  The setting might or might not be a worship assembly, but anywhere Christians are together.  We can see it in Acts 2:42.  It is public or group prayer that helped define the relationship among the Christians.

Tolle says that social prayer can help with resolving conflicts among brethren, can help the group in emergencies or special occasions, and can become a characteristic of the group just as togetherness in prayer marked the early church.  The early Christians each presented the interests of all the brethren, Tolle says, and they considered all of those interests their own.

If the church today uses social prayer as a way of approaching things, Tolle says it would increase the "fighting power" of the church, give us strength to meet every emergency, and lead to growth in love and fellowship.

Prayer in worship is something that Tolle finds to be an integral part of the spiritual welfare and development of Christians and a necessary ingredient for harmony and unity in the church.  Leading public prayer is important work, a weighty responsibility.

Tolle suggests that prayer leaders speak audibly and clearly; offer prayers to God, not as sermons, even though they are to be heard by everyone; avoid vain repetition, which means to be careful about anything that is repeated over and over or inserted to fill time; avoid trite words and expressions, which tend to attract atention to themselves rather than to the actual request; and be sincere and natural.  We should think about what we are doing and use our words rather than "aping" someone else.  We are directing hearts and minds, not proving how much we know, not proving how capable we are in expressing ourselves, not being less than our best self.  We try to offer prayers of good understanding.

In our lesson from Baxter, we looked at some things the disciples learned from Christ about prayer.  He said not to pray like the hyprocrites, to be seen praying by lots of people.  He said not to use vain repetition, because such mindlesss practices were abundant in pagan religion both then and before then.  He modeled a prayer for both physical and spiritual needs.  His prayer was simple.  It was direct, specific, and vivid.  It was addressed to God, and it included a good measure of praise to God.

There are several lessons about prayer contained in James 5:13-18.  When James writes, "let him pray," he suggests the importance of individual prayer.  But, he also says, "let them pray," showing that united or group prayer has significance.  He mentions the prayer of faith, which denotes believing prayer that is prayed in faith.  He depicts the Christians praying for one another, which upholds the concept of intercessory prayer.  He mentions effective, fervent prayer, showing that a Christian should pursue his or her requests to God with some effort.  He discusses Elijah praying for no rain, then for rain, which points to specific prayer.  Finally, he demonstrates that Elijah prayed more than once about this Old Testament event, thus highlighting the need for repeated or habitual prayer.

If we can combine these and other lessons on prayer and work them all into our worship assembly, we will have a mighty force working for us as a congregation.  The public prayer life of the congregation is fed and supported by the individual prayer lives of the members.  That should cause us to ask the challenging question, "How are my prayers contributing to the life of my congregation?"