24:3 – The Value of Prayer!

About once a term at Bishop Hannington we have a prayer week. This isn’t to say this is the onlytime people are encouraged to pray, but rather just a time when we are encouraged to pray much more together as a Church and individually.

This happened last week and to finish it we had an event called 24:3. The idea was based upon the international 24-7 prayer movement where there is many Churches all across the world always praying – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was decided that at BH it would be run for three days as opposed to seven, hence 24:3. It was run from 8pm on Friday evening until 8pm on Monday evening and it was a great success! It was so great to see that every prayer slot was filled, even the ones in the middle of the night!

I was asked to provide a couple of songs and readings each night at 10pm to get the night shift going as it was expected that the youth would be there at that time. I must admit on the Friday after a long week at work I didnt feel a huge desire to go and pray -  it is amazing how God changes things though! The following night when I went back a group of us had an amazing three hour period where we sung and prayed and focused upon the Lord and it was so great to be a part of it! Although it was 1 o’clock in the morning I just felt wide awake and I think everyone who was there did. Equally then on the Sunday we had a great time praying with one another and I must say that, for the first time in my life I reckon, I was gutted to have to leave a prayer meeting! I just knew that the following day at work would be unbearable if I stayed too long though! I really felt so blessed by the time that we spent in Prayer over the weekend.

I would wholly recommend this event to any Church. It was great to see so many members of the Church commit to praying and even those who couldnt make it were committing to pray at home. Our prayer was that God would make us as a Church more reliant upon Him in prayer as we see that He is the only answer to all of life’s stresses, troubles and questions. I know that I all too often am reluctant to pray or I turn to it as a last resort.

In addition to this I have been reading Praying Successfully by C.H. Spurgeon and there was one verse in particular that really struck me that he spoke about, it is this:

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.                                              James 4:1-3

What an incredible yet so simple thing to say: You do not have, because you do not ask God. It is so true that so many quarrels and fights are about what we want for our own selfish desires, but we can know that if we ask for anything with pure, God glorifying motives, then we will receive from God in abundance!

I feel encouraged to pray more!