Three Practical Reasons Why You Should Pray for Your Church

Every morning on my commute to work, I get stuck in traffic within the first 2 kilometre’s of my journey, for anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes (on a really bad day!). I use this time to do a number of things, but over the past 6 or so months, I’ve included praying for my church, using our monthly prayer diary, in my routine. Here are three practical, reasons, why I’ve found this a great addition!

1. Keep up on What’s Happening

I don’t know about you and your church, but there are lots of things happening every day in the St. Faith’s community that I have no idea about! Sometimes because they don’t actively involve my demographic or the service I attend, or because I’ve missed an announcement at church. I’ve found that praying daily for church has opened my eyes to the huge amount of things that happen. Some things that I’ve found out about include a monthly 55+ social lunch, growth in numbers at our Gumnut Kindergarten and Gumnut Playtime groups (so much so that a 2nd group has started!), and lives being changed at Long Bay Prison through a ministry there that one of our church members is involved with. All of these don’t come up in conversation at church regularly, but are still great ministries to be keeping up to date on.

2. You can Encourage Others

Personally, I find it really encouraging when I know people are praying for me. In the world of social media, it’s pretty easy to drop someone a quick Facebook wall post and let them know that you’ve prayed for them, and encourage them to keep serving in the ministry their involved with, or to keep trusting Jesus when times are tough. Often, the prayer diary will call for prayer for particular people, and while I don’t know all of them, I try and encourage the ones I do by simply dropping them a line to let them know that I’ve prayed for them.

3. You Can See God at Work

It’s great to see answered prayer! Our prayer diary is always full of requests, and it’s great to see or hear about God answering prayer. It’s a good reminder that God is Sovereign, and that He hears our requests for big and small things. The prayer diary will sometimes include thanksgiving for the success of an event, or good news about a situation that we can be thankful to God for too!

If you don’t pray regularly for your church, I’d strongly encourage you to do it!  I keep the copy of the prayer diary in my car, and our church office does a great job at putting it online too, so if I forget, I can just look up todays prayer points on my phone or computer! If your church doesn’t have a prayer diary, maybe pickup a calendar of events and pray for those as their date comes closer, or talk to the staff at your church about setting one up!