I ?m not good at relationships, but I ?m getting better. How do I know? Well, God and I communicate a lot more than we did before, and more and more frequently, we communicate about other people.
I suspect that my prayer life has been a lot like most people ?s: about my needs, when I have needs. But that started to change dramatically when I began participating in a men ?s group in Cincinnati. We spent a lot of time in fellowship, talking about our week, sharing our struggles, encouraging each other, and studying the Bible, but we spent most of our time in prayer.
I had never experienced such prayer times before ?sometimes as long as half an hour. While that really isn ?t a long time, considering there were about six to eight of us any given night, it was a long time for a bunch of guys. We started praying those perfunctory prayers: ?Thank you, God, for this and that ? and ?God bless us all ?; we were just on auto-pilot. At some point, our prayers changed. Instead of praying for someone who had an illness, we boldly asked for healing. Instead of thanking God for his power, we openly thanked him for deliverance from addiction. We prayed about promotions, parenting skills, and even traffic tickets.
The thing is, I can ?t say whether our prayers changed because we got closer or whether we got closer because of our prayers. Either way, it ?s clear that there ?s a connection between our relationships and our prayers. In his letter of encouragement to Timothy, Paul writes: ?I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone ? (1 Timothy 2:1). If you would like to grow the connections you have with your brothers and sisters in Christ, grab a copy of the weekly prayer list at the welcome center or ask to have it sent to your email address and join us Wednesdays at 1:15 in Mark ?s office for the weekly prayer meeting.