Church on a Wednesday evening under a kitchen sink?! – 21 days to go.
Aside from David Crowder’s book I'm also reading another one (which is an unusual feet for me :o) by Pete Greig “Red Moon Rising” which is about the birth of the 24-7 prayer movement. 
“Whether we think of, or speak to, God, whether we act or suffer for him, all is prayer, when we have no other object than his love, and the desire of pleasing him. All that a Christian does, even in eating and sleeping, is prayer, when it is done in simplicity, according to the order of God …. In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is a continual prayer” (John Wesley – ‘A Plain Account of Christian Living’, 1703-1791)
What does it mean to pray 24-7? It means living our whole lives, 24 hours a day 7 days a week, in the grateful awareness of god’s presence and with a desire to please him always. Prayer is not just about the contemplative moments or the moments when I’m consciously firing words at God. The call to pray without ceasing (1 Thes 5:17) is a call to remember Christ’s presence continually in the subconscious, in my reflex reactions, even when I’m sleeping or working or watching a movie? How am I to be Christian by default as well as determination?
The key is to maintain a rhythm, a heartbeat of disciplined prayer, in which I encounter Christ regularly, deliberately and consciously. The spin-off of these times, as you will see in the character of any older person who has spent a great deal of their life contemplating Jesus, is that his presence thereby moves by a process of osmosis from the conscious into the subconscious mind. As we open the door again and again to Christ, he comes in day by day and with us, laughs with us and shares with us until we acquire his mannerisms and know his very thoughts. A season of 24-7 prayer can be a useful tool for bringing Christ consciously back into the midst of our ongoing lives as individuals and as communities. And prayer rooms are an interesting expression of God’s intention, which has always been to walk in continual communion with his people.
But just as no person could or should spend every waking moment in a 24-7 prayer room, so we must understand that the prayer room is an expression of the continual communion between God and his people, but it is not the same thing. The ultimate 24-7 prayer room is the human heart fully surrendered to God and not a room full of coffee mugs and hand-drawn pictures!
What we want to do, in Wesley’s words, is to live lives of prayer as ‘souls filled with love and the desire to please God.’ So the prayer room or the place of prayer creates the moment of conscious disciplined prayer that then enables me to live prayerfully in front of my VDU screen, or while teaching an 18-year-old to drive, or working on a check-out or whatever job I do. We don’t want to withdraw people from society to live in spiritual bubbles of perpetual prayer; rather we want to immerse ourselves in society, having immersed ourselves in the Spirit – in the world and yet full of God and overflowing.
“When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matt 9:36)
I was thinking about this in the bath (this is my bath time book) and I was suddenly realising all the times in which I was doing church. The other night Ruth and I went over and did some plumbing for a lady. Calling out a legitimate plumber would have cost more than she could have afforded and she is going through a rough time. She is not a Christian, but in sacrificing our evening Ruth and I ‘did church’ in this ladies home without her (or us at the time) realising. We reached out motivated by love, it was a moment of prayerful living responding to God’s heart. Many people, even her family, ignored this opportunity to reach out, but not God. This was a fusion of our time and God’s love.
Sunday mornings are there as a reminder of how to live church every day of the week.
“Whether we think of, or speak to, God, whether we act or suffer for him, all is prayer, when we have no other object than his love, and the desire of pleasing him. All that a Christian does, even in eating and sleeping, is prayer, when it is done in simplicity, according to the order of God …. In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is a continual prayer” (John Wesley – ‘A Plain Account of Christian Living’, 1703-1791)
What does it mean to pray 24-7? It means living our whole lives, 24 hours a day 7 days a week, in the grateful awareness of god’s presence and with a desire to please him always. Prayer is not just about the contemplative moments or the moments when I’m consciously firing words at God. The call to pray without ceasing (1 Thes 5:17) is a call to remember Christ’s presence continually in the subconscious, in my reflex reactions, even when I’m sleeping or working or watching a movie? How am I to be Christian by default as well as determination?
The key is to maintain a rhythm, a heartbeat of disciplined prayer, in which I encounter Christ regularly, deliberately and consciously. The spin-off of these times, as you will see in the character of any older person who has spent a great deal of their life contemplating Jesus, is that his presence thereby moves by a process of osmosis from the conscious into the subconscious mind. As we open the door again and again to Christ, he comes in day by day and with us, laughs with us and shares with us until we acquire his mannerisms and know his very thoughts. A season of 24-7 prayer can be a useful tool for bringing Christ consciously back into the midst of our ongoing lives as individuals and as communities. And prayer rooms are an interesting expression of God’s intention, which has always been to walk in continual communion with his people.
But just as no person could or should spend every waking moment in a 24-7 prayer room, so we must understand that the prayer room is an expression of the continual communion between God and his people, but it is not the same thing. The ultimate 24-7 prayer room is the human heart fully surrendered to God and not a room full of coffee mugs and hand-drawn pictures!
What we want to do, in Wesley’s words, is to live lives of prayer as ‘souls filled with love and the desire to please God.’ So the prayer room or the place of prayer creates the moment of conscious disciplined prayer that then enables me to live prayerfully in front of my VDU screen, or while teaching an 18-year-old to drive, or working on a check-out or whatever job I do. We don’t want to withdraw people from society to live in spiritual bubbles of perpetual prayer; rather we want to immerse ourselves in society, having immersed ourselves in the Spirit – in the world and yet full of God and overflowing.
“When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matt 9:36)
I was thinking about this in the bath (this is my bath time book) and I was suddenly realising all the times in which I was doing church. The other night Ruth and I went over and did some plumbing for a lady. Calling out a legitimate plumber would have cost more than she could have afforded and she is going through a rough time. She is not a Christian, but in sacrificing our evening Ruth and I ‘did church’ in this ladies home without her (or us at the time) realising. We reached out motivated by love, it was a moment of prayerful living responding to God’s heart. Many people, even her family, ignored this opportunity to reach out, but not God. This was a fusion of our time and God’s love.
Sunday mornings are there as a reminder of how to live church every day of the week.
posted by Andrew at 6:27 am
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