Praying on Purpose

      About a month ago, we learned if we are going to be successful, the hand of the Lord must be with us (cf. Acts 11:21). If hand of the Lord is to be with us, we have to pray on purpose. This is a good time to give ourselves a little check up. How have we been doing at praying on purpose?

      Prayer is one of those important, but not urgent, habits that easily get pushed to the back burner for a more convenient time. If we will pray on purpose, we must purpose to pray. We have to schedule prayer. As the apostles knew they were going to pray at the ninth hour (Acts 3:1) and Daniel knew he was going to pray three times a day (Daniel 6), we need to know when we are going to pray. We need to schedule it and keep the rest of our day from getting in the way.

      We must not only purpose to pray, we must pray our purpose. We need to pray our congregation’s purpose. We need to pray the congregation accomplishes its purpose. We need to pray the individual members help further our purpose. Of course, in order to do this, we have to know our purpose. The elders have summed up our mission in the following statement:

Our mission is to glorify God (Ephesians 3:20-21).

We accomplish this mission by …

1)…providing a family atmosphere of love and unity (Ephesians 4:1-3).

2)…nurturing and supporting each member (Ephesians 4:12).

3)…growing to spiritual maturity (Ephesians 4:13)

4)…living devout lives of godly influence (Matthew 5:14-16).

5)…using our talents faithfully (I Peter 4:10-11).

6)…bringing many souls to Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:19-20).

      Finally, if we are to pray on purpose, we must pray purposefully. That is, we must plan our prayers. Though, we will pray all sorts of things, here we are talking about praying as a part of the congregation. I really don’t care what kind of plan you follow, but please, follow some plan. We suggested one that seemed to be well-received.

      Sunday: Pray with the congregation

      Monday: Pray for our shepherds

      Tuesday: Pray for our deacons

      Wednesday: Pray for our evangelism

      Thursday: Pray for our Bible classes

      Friday: Pray for our members

      Saturday: Pray through the mission

      It has been four weeks since we learned these lessons? How have you been doing? Wednesday is a great day for me because I know many of you are praying for me that day. That feeling spills over into the whole week. I know others feel the same.

      Let’s keep up our habits. Let’s keep on praying on purpose.

Edwin L. Crozier