God has always gathered His people together to pray. So why has the weekly prayer meeting gone out of favor? What are the blessings of weekly prayer meetings? What is the Biblical basis for gathering the church specifically for prayer midweek? What scriptural guidelines are there for prayer meetings? What are the common problems in prayer meetings? What about children in prayer meetings? Why do families with little kids often not attend regularly? What should we think about this?

� Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of scripture. Today we're going to focus on a matter of church life, of local church life, the gathered corporate meetings for prayer. And I think we recognize that weekly prayer meetings seem to have fallen out of use in many churches across our land شر eremy estrut And you remember that that old funny adage that somebody came up with, you know, if you love the church, you'll be there on Sunday morning. If you love the pastor, you'll be there on Sunday night, but if you love Jesus, you'll be there at the Wednesday night prayer meeting.

So whether that's true or not, I don't know, but it certainly is helpful to launch this discussion here. You know, one of the things that has occurred to me is how odd �'s in terms of the culture. It's very counterculture. It's very socially discordant. It's culturally odd because you bring together � and they pray to an unseen person and it's so different from everything else you do in life.

It's not like entertainment. You're really dependent upon the genuineness of the hearts of the people who've gathered. You're dependent upon their spiritual condition. � some come discouraged, some feeling flat or dead spiritually, some are really excited, some are at sort of a peak of their Christian life over the last few months, and some are at the bottom. Some are burdened with sin, some are afraid about finances, so you have this conglomeration and there's really nobody to whoop everybody up because you're dependent on the prayers of the people and so it's this remarkable experience where everybody is subject to the spirits, to the spiritual fervor and everything like that of one another and there's nobody that can whoop it up there's no entertainer in the front so true yeah so anyway there you have it so let's talk about the blessings of a weekly prayer meeting we our churches we've had weekly prayer meetings for many years and we're going to keep doing it.

So I get the privilege of introducing my co-elder. We've been co-elder, I think first, is it six years now? It's five, yeah, six years at Sovereign Redeemer. And we were leading a corporate prayer meeting last night, so we definitely have a shared experience together. This is James Lundquist, co-elder at Sovereign Redeemer.

Thank you so much, James. We've been banging around for about a decade and a half, haven't we? Yes, we have. That's right. So blessings, blessings of the weekly prayer meetings.

What are they? One thing just back on what you were talking about, when you come to a prayer meeting, the difference there is on Sunday morning, you're coming and you can come and just consume, right? You can come and just sing and hear the sermon and part of that. When you come to a prayer meeting, if you don't participate, people don't participate, it's not going to go very well. So some of the blessings on that is you get to hear other people, unlike what you get to hear on Sunday morning.

Hear their concerns, hear what they're praying about, hear what's on their heart, hear what they're praising God about. We hear what they're praying about. � Shlomo me with praises to God over what they have done in some lives, so one big difference, that's a blessing. Yeah, last night was sweet because we got to praise God for some of the things we've been praying about last week at last week's prayer meeting or two weeks ago prayer meeting, God swiftly answered some of those prayers. So it was an opportunity to just acknowledge what God had done.

And you talk about participation, James, you're absolutely right. You're in a morning worship service, you're really drawn in to participate. But in prayer, you're the one that is called to participate. In other words, to affirm the prayers that are being prayed. We say amen, you know, We affirm, we actually enter into the prayer but you have to do that yourself.

Nobody can make you do that and so getting yourself positioned to enter into the prayers is the way that we participate but that's something that has to come from intrinsic motivation. And so we do enter into the prayers by affirming it as if the whole church is saying, that's my prayer too. That's what we do. And it brings us together in unity. That's one blessing is it sort of brings the church together in unity.

Here's a blessing. It's not specific to the prayers per se but if I've heard James say this one time, I've heard him say it a hundred times which is what we need is the steady drip, drip, drip, drip of God helping us in different ways. And the weekly prayer meeting is one of those drips. God wants us to have a steady drip of sustenance in our lives over the course of a long period of time and this is just another touch point where we get to be together in the presence of God but also with each other. It's a touch point with each other as well.

You know at our prayer meetings I learn about some of the trials and tribulations of people I didn't even know about. So true. And our people know one another and I get to know them through the prayers. That's a key touch point, right? That touch point.

People talk about wanting to get to know people better. You know where they're going to be on Wednesday night. And it's a great place for a touch point for to hear you're just saying their needs, whether trials, what are their blessings? What are you going to be thankful for? Another blessing is praying for missions.

How many times do you just get together the family and just pray for missions? Here you can just pray and help lead that and hear where the interest is from many people and what they're doing. It's a family discipleship point as well. There's another blessing when you bring your family together. It's a place for family discipleship to happen.

We bring all ages together, male, female, men, women, everybody praying together. And it's a blessing seeing everybody together. Yeah. And we weep with those who weep and we rejoice with those who rejoice. So it spreads out the sensibilities throughout the whole congregation.

Yeah. Think of what you communicate by making your mid-week meeting focused on prayer. You actually communicate to yourself and to everybody else what we need the most. We can't supply for ourselves. The things that we need the most are out of our control And so we go to the one who controls it even before you spoken a word even before the first prayer has been prayed what you're saying is we're out of control.

These things aren't within our control, but we know who controls them. And he's willing to help his people, and oftentimes all we need to do is ask, so we're going to gather and ask. Yeah. It really... It just demonstrates our dependency in God's greatness every time we meet together.

It's a time to... You know a blessing is a time to slow down. Even on Sunday morning, I just counted a little while ago, we have probably about six or seven times we'll pray during the service. One is a corporate time of the men praying, but this is a different time is slow down. Jason says a lot linger longer.

You just slow down intentionally. Let's linger on praise. Let's linger on Thanksgiving. Let's linger on the gospel. Let's linger on his glorious attributes.

Linger on all these things some more than you can on a Sunday morning, that's a blessing. Maybe there's three, four people in a row that pray for the same thing. Yeah, that is so there really are so many blessings to gathering together, you know, in this way. Why do you think the practice has gone out of favor? I don't want to spend too much time on this, but do you have any theories?

Even really large churches, if they have a prayer meeting, very few come, Or they don't even have one. So my theory is too much competition. If you want your prayer meeting attended and prioritized, you have to prioritize it by eliminating a lot of the competition. If your church has four or five different things going on, people will be distributed among those four or five different things, and the prayer meeting might be the least attended of all those things. But if you clear out a lot of that schedule and prioritize the prayer meeting by eliminating the competition, people will come and pray.

That's a really good point. James, anything on that? Why do you think it has fallen out of favor? You know, it is hard on ourselves here, as elders, how much are we prioritizing in our own personal lives? And, and on Sunday morning, as I mentioned, we pray, I just probably have six, seven times when the service is being prayed.

So as our church, as the congregation seeing prayer as our priority is maybe a lack of prayer, an effect of the elders not praying in private as we've been set aside to do, one of our main responsibilities, is that happening? Is the reflection on family worship not happening so you don't see it, You don't see an importance of doing this with with the church. You know, those may be a couple things in the planning is a big one. Have you just don't plan it. Yeah, maybe you have a prayer meeting, but you don't see it as a focus for your family.

Amen. You don't see prayer as an essential part of your life. Right. Hey, let's talk about the biblical basis for a prayer meeting where the entire church gathers. Well, you certainly find it throughout the gospels, Jesus gathering his disciples to pray.

And then you see it in the book of Acts in Acts chapter 1 when they're waiting for the sending of the Holy Spirit. How are they using that time? They're actually gathering in the upper room. The disciples together with the women and the other disciples are gathering to pray. That's how they're using their time.

I think it's Acts chapter 12 when Peter's in prison. When he gets out of prison miraculously he finds the church praying for him. So it's certainly a New Testament pattern. I think it was a week ago I exhorted during our prayer meeting and talked about 12 different places in Acts, there's prayers in almost every chapter, but specifically 12 places where it's either with the church or with a larger gathering in the church. A couple places I like, Nehemiah 9 is a whole gathering of the nation of Israel.

You can look at it as a church, and it's one big long prayer that the leaders are praying. The other place is Ephesians 6 after the armor of God. So you have the armor of God going all through that, and without stopping a beat, without stopping � in verse 18, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit. So we like the armor of God, let's pray for it. I can't give myself it.

I can't go buy it. I need to pray. There is in the Lord's prayer, when the Lord taught his disciples to pray, he taught them to pray a corporate prayer, not a personal individualistic prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven. The whole prayer is directed corporately.

So it implies that we are praying our, us, we're together, and we pray in this manner. So the people of God should gather together to pray. I think that's really clear in Scripture. Let's talk about some guidelines. Guidelines for prayer meetings.

And I'll just kick it off with one guideline. And this is the way that we've been doing it for years. Our view is that we should pray as much as we can, leave as much time to actually pray as we can. So We don't take requests. We say, you know, don't make a request, just pray about it.

If it's on your heart, pray about it. Bring it up and we'll join you and we'll join you. There's so much time that's wasted in sharing requests and concern. And of course, everybody knows when you do that, it can turn it can border on gossip or you know slander or something like that yeah so if you want to pray something pray it and let's don't spend our time just talking about prayer let's pray So that's one principle to dedicate the time toward the prayers, not the talking about praying. So I want to commend a resource.

It's a really obscure one, but you actually can get your hands on it, baby. You got to want it bad because it's actually old and out of out of print in the sense that it hasn't been modernized, even to the extent that the S's are F's in many cases. So, this is a photocopy of a book written by John Newton, so, the writer of Amazing Grace, the former slave trader that God had mercy on, has written a book called 26 Letters of Religious Subjects and letter number 18 is thoughts on the exercise of social prayer. So I'll show you the book here and you can get your hands on it on Amazon but you have to look hard for it. Here's, by the way, the problems that we have in modern prayer meetings, he addresses all of them.

There's nothing new under the sun and so really the council here is golden. Let me just give you one. Newton says, � to a certain number of minutes. But it is better of the two that the hearers should wish the prayer had been longer than spend half or a considerable part of the time wishing it was over. So you've never been in that prayer meeting where someone just prayed on and on and everything every individual thing that they prayed about was worthy of prayer But we are dust and Are frames are dust meaning we have lots of frailties.

One of them is we have a hard time hanging in on prayers like that. Some prayers are too long, you're better off to break them up into two or three different prayers and sprinkle them throughout the prayer meeting than to go on because people won't be able to stay with you. I'm regularly encouraging our congregation to pray like Nehemiah, arrow prayers, shoot them up, short prayers, don't you consume all the time, but give room for everybody to pray. If you have people who pray too long, you'll have people who won't pray at all. And so you know getting to the point quickly you don't have to pray about absolutely everything you know some people will get up and they'll they'll pray for everything that they know is going on.

No don't do that pray about one thing and leave it open you know for others in the congregation and make way make way if it's not covered cover cover it with an arrow prayer later on. You know Scott when I first got saved and we were in prayer meetings, we called it, Popcorn Prayer. Like, pop, pop, pop, pop! It's like you have this quick burst where you pray about something that's on your mind and heart. But you're not building a chain link by link that becomes a long chain.

It's one pop and then you leave away, for your brother. Here's another thing I encourage our congregation, don't leave away. �n be very casual. But can you come prepared? I'm saying you prepared a big old notes during the day, you've got things going on, but at least consider ahead of time, where you're going to pray about on the in the car, drive over, instruct your family, hey what are some things on my way over to the prayer meeting last night?

Do it every week. What are things that we can be praying for tonight? What are things we can be thankful for? That can help with those pauses. That can help get people's minds set on what needs to be said, and be prepared for prayer.

And it's embarrassing how little that requires of you and yet I find myself week after week showing up thinking oh what what are the needs that we should be praying about tonight yeah you know another another thing that hinders prayer is men particularly won't want to pray because they don't feel like they have the right words, they feel embarrassed when they pray. And I would say if someone feels embarrassed when they pray they ought to just ask is this because of pride is it because of pride yeah nobody nobody prays perfectly perfect prayers in terms of their motives we and So we always have to deal with the sin of wanting to impress with our words. Anybody who prays has to cross that bridge, and the truth is, even our prayers will have taints of sin in them. That shouldn't stop us from praying. I end up encouraging men in particular, look, of course you're self-conscious.

God calls you out of your self-consciousness to pray for these people and to pray for whatever's there but don't just be bound up in yourself and and all gummed up by your own sensibilities because God's command you to pray it's way better just to open up and pray and if you didn't say it right that's fine nobody there's gonna be no condemnation for that. Let me give you another John Newtonism. The prayers of some good of some good men are more like preaching than praying. There you go, they rather express the Lord's mind to the people than the desires of the people to the Lord. Indeed this can hardly be called prayer.

Newton has been to our prayer meetings. I'm sure of it but that is a natural tendency if there's something on your mind as a way to communicate it to your brethren but it's really not the time for that. Yeah. And anything else on the problems in prayer meetings? Yeah, they observe your own, be self-aware of your own.

That's some of the things Jason's saying. Listen to the words you're saying. I, I can get into habits of starting prayer certain way. I can get into habits of saying prayers in a certain way using the same language all the time. I need help with that.

And so I'm self-aware. I try to be self-aware of my own habits I get into trying to break them because that can be vain repetition in many ways of my own making just be aware of what you're saying what your children are saying what your family's saying and and encourage them not to expand their prayers more yeah what you say reminds me of this meaningless repetition that the Lord Jesus were just on autopilot saying the same old words you know like some people do at dinnertime. So okay I want to I want to move on to the matter of children in prayer meetings. You know, in our prayer meetings the children are all present. You know, one of the things at least I've experienced is that, you know, a family has a lot of kids, you know, they've got lots of little kids, They're not as regular in the prayer meetings as I would want them to be, but I do understand the problem.

I just want to know if you all have any helpful counsel to a family with small children. They may feel really guilty because they don't come to every single prayer meeting, but they also face challenges when they bring their children. Any thoughts about that? We always took our kids to the prayer meeting. We found it a really valuable time for even just child training.

I know the prayer meeting is for more than that, but it's actually a way to acclimate children to being at church and the expectations of sitting still and sitting quietly actually can be a big help for Sunday. I know a father in our congregation was working on this and he had his child on his lap last night and it went great. He's been working on it and man, the fruit was born � this is part of his child training. It also is a way to teach children how to pray. They get to hear more than just your voice praying.

Your brothers and sisters in the church are going to help them learn how to pray. It is some of the sweetest prayers. The children's prayer are some of the sweetest. They will say the same prayer week in and week out because they have faith or they're trusting this. Save my grandma, save my brother, save my sister, help my mom in her pregnancy.

It's some of the sweetest prayers, most candid, just honest prayers. It's unfiltered, parents need to help with the filter at times. But they're some of the most sweet prayers week after week after week. That's great. Well, OK, So I guess we're here to encourage corporate prayer life in the churches to keep understanding how to make make those times more and more helpful.

We really are dependent on the spiritual conditions of those who come pray that God would bring people ready to pray, ready to cry out to God hungry, joyful, sad but all in the Lord. So, and thank you James thanks for joining us I really, really appreciate it. Okay, and thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast.