How is Community Prayer Different from Personal Prayer? Is it OK to Pray for Ourselves During Community Prayer?

 

How is the praying we do in worship (“community prayer”) different from personal prayer?  Is it OK to pray for ourselves during community prayer?  These are just two of the questions that the CVC Advisory Committee grappled with this week.  What are your questions about prayer? 

We probably have all prayed for people we love in personal prayer.  But all kinds of things can affect how each of us enter into community prayer.  We recently talked in Circle Conversation about why community prayer is difficult, and the barriers were many.  We have also discovered through Circle Conversation that many of us are introverts.  This affects how we speak.  Did you know that extroverts think out loud and introverts think about their words before they say them?  

God loves us all just the way we are.  Being silent during prayer time is OK - some of us are thinking and some of us are trying to find the words, the emotions can be difficult…many reasons, right? 

Romans 8:26-28:

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

Community prayer can draw us closer together, though, as I have discovered at the Advisory Committee.  When we pray together we share our concerns with each other.  

What can watching Jesus teach us about prayer?  Did Jesus pray in community or just alone?  We know that Jesus often went away to pray by himself.

But in the passage we read last week, when Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer, did you notice that the pronouns are plural?  “Our father…Give us this day our daily bread…Forgive us our  trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  So the Lord’s Prayer is actually a community prayer.

And in John 17,  just before his betrayal and arrest, Jesus shared a final Passover meal with his friends.  Right before leaving the Upper Room, he prayed for himself, for his disciples, and for all believers.  And he did this with his friends.  I invite you to read it - it’s a great example of community prayer.

So yes, Jesus prayed alone and in community.  And He shows us that it is OK to pray for ourselves in church!

I hope you can join us this week for worship and praying.  Rev. Donna will be reflecting on Romans 8:22 - 28; I invite you to read that ahead of time.

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