We begin a new three-week worship series this week on Prayer. It is based on two books: Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott and Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard J. Foster. This series comes from the desires expressed in so many of our Deep Commitments regarding prayer. While we may not answer all the questions raised by our Deep Commitments, we do hope to focus on 3 areas: the history of prayer, praying in community, and the personal practice of prayer.
Outline of Prayer
June 21 Prayer through history based on Mark 4.35-41 Jesus stills the waters. Help!
June 28 Prayer in our community based on Psalm 30 – Singing praises to God. Thanks
July 5 Prayer in our life based on Matthew 6.9-15 – The Lord’s prayer. Wow
Anne Lamott opens Help, Thanks, Wow with this: “I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe, over the past twenty-five years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple” (1). For this series we will define prayer as “communication with God.” Clearly this definition includes many things: words & silence, movement & stillness, privacy & community. The goal of prayer is to tune our hearts to God’s heart so much that we find ourselves in constant prayers. This takes practice. “To be spiritually fit to scale the Himalayas of the spirit, we need regular exercise in the hills and valleys of ordinary life.” (Foster, Preface) Prayer does not need to be complicated. It is simply important to try!
Our sanctuary will be a place to practice prayer each week during this worship series. There will be places to work with paper & pens, places to kneel in prayer with candles, opportunities to pray for others, and invitations to share your own needs for prayer with our community. There is not a wrong or right way, there is only the way in which you will try to practice prayer in these weeks. The children of our community will be with us in worship for the first two weeks of this series. I say this in hopes of reminding us of the range of ages we seek to welcome as we pray – infants to great-grandparents – we will all pray together and we all may need a bit of help along the way.
This week we hear the story of Jesus stilling the waters as an answer to the “Help!” prayer of the disciples. Read Mark 4.35-41 Think of a time in which you felt threatened and found yourself in prayer. What was your prayer? How did you experience the answer to your prayer?