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.