Week TWO - Worship History

We are talking about PRAYER and SCRIPTURE this week.

THIS struck me when reading Dan Wilt's EBook:

"We don’t have an indication that every day was filled with corporate singing, but we do have an indication that every day held some form of corporate prayer in the worship life of the earliest followers of Jesus."

I had not really thought much about CORPORATE prayer in regards to my church life currently or how it was when I grew up. But now that I sit back and think about it, corporate prayer is such a TINY part of our time together as a community!

During our service, worship and the teaching time are the biggest parts of our service. Someone prays before we start worship and sometimes before the teaching time and then at the end of the service. But that's once a week! And I think even then, we should be spending WAY more time in our services for PRAYER!

When I think of other religions that wake up in the middle of the night to pray, or who have days put aside for prayer, or churches who have prayer meetings every day...I think it's a great! Not always practical but it really keeps them absorbed in prayer, in talking to the Father DAILY. That is something I struggle with.

Do we maybe focus more on worship because it's a form of entertainment? Even the teaching can be filled with points/videos/jokes to entertain us. Is that why we don't spend as much time in prayer? Too serious? Too depressing at times? Too self-focused?

I don't have the answers, but this is making me think. When planning a service, I really want to incorporate more prayer - even though I am VERY afraid of praying in public, it's such a personal thing for me.

Imagine if we went back to the "old days" and made it a priority to have CORPORATE prayer every single day. Praying TOGETHER every day for those around us, for our hurting world. Pretty sure we would see change.

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Week ONE - Worship History

In Dan Wilt's video "The Worship Languages of Time and Space 2", he mentioned something that struck me. He is talking about events that are very important in the timeline of Christianity, mostly Sunday's. Examples would be Advent, Lent, Christmas, Easter Sunday, etc...

In all honesty most of those holidays, except for Christmas, come and go so fast without much attention paid to them, that I tend to forget WHY we honor these days and WHY they should mean so much to me as a believer.

Dan said that "We are so eager to get to the event... and say it's all been done that
we forget to re-anticipate." How true is that?? Do I spend any time thinking about what happened in history to lead up to these important days? Do I reflect on what God DID, on the amazing works that happened?

I realized that I really do not spent time anticipating. I anticipate Christmas because I have to get all of my gifts bought. But do I think about spending time really pressing into my daughter the importance of this holiday? Of the traditions we have?

And I'm surprised by the realization that I don't spend enough time anticipating because I tend to get a little upset by how lackluster many of our church services are around these holidays. I am always thinking that there could have been way more thought put into the services, especially since these are times of the year that many come to church for the first time that season. Why are we not taking those opportunities to reach those walking in the doors? It frustrates me that we don't put more energy into telling the stories and the realities of those events. But maybe the people putting together the services are doing what Dan said. Just happy to have it all done and in place...which is probably how I would be most of the time.

What a challenge to start RE-ANTICIPATING and really pondering the importance of what God has done and all that goes along with the stories in the Bible and applying them to my life NOW.

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