The prayer meeting!! How important to our churches and it's relevance

[A cruce salus]

How important is prayer meeting to you, and how relevant should it be in all our lives as we think about what is happening in the world around us. Since i have been in charge of the prayer meeting for not too long it has opened my eyes to what it really means to me as a Seventh Day Adventist Christian.

What are your thoughts?

[Larry Lyons]

Cruce, I firmly believe that as time grows shorter and things get more difficult and persecution looms right in front of us, we will painfully regret the time we could have spent in prayer meeting but chose not to.  I believe right now we, as a church,  are behaving much like Peter James and John as they slept through Christ's bitter spiritual struggle in Gethsemane. They missed out on the blessings and strength they would have received if they had watched and prayed as Jesus had told them to. Instead, look at how they responded as the crisis suddenly came upon them. I believe that there is a real danger for us if we do not prepare ourselves now by taking advantage of every opportunity to study and to meet together to pray. God is doing everything  that can be done to enable us to be ready to stand in these difficult times that we seem to be entering even now. It is up to us to take advantage of them.

[colporteur]

How important is prayer meeting to you, and how relevant should it be in all our lives as we think about what is happening in the world around us. Since i have been in charge of the prayer meeting for not too long it has opened my eyes to what it really means to me as a Seventh Day Adventist Christian.

What are your thoughts?

Your experience proves how beneficial it is to be actively engaged in the church.

[Deep Waters]

The challenge I have observed is that we are satisfied with exercising our religious liberty by going to church once, maybe twice a week.

I shall never forget when one testified about his encounter with the secret SDA church in China. He told how they meet every night of the week except Thursday night because they needed to prepare for Sabbath on Thursday night. Then he was asked, "In America, where you have all this freedom of religion, which night of the week do you not meet?" We should be ashamed with our answer.

At our church, we used to have small group meeting once a week. But we tried to cram prayer, Bible study, personal testimony, and social time all into one evening. It really isn't effectual to be that efficient!

I believe that if we spent one hour on Monday night for prayer, one hour on Tuesday night for Bible study, one hour on Wednesday night for SOP study (i.e. the Testimonies for the Church), one hour on Thursday night for door to door witnessing to our neighbors, one hour on Friday night for personal testimonies, well I think you get the point I am trying to make, then we would be a growing, vibrant church. New members would be discipled. True success would be achieved.

[A cruce salus]

I thank you for your very important posts, but am surprised i have gotten more views than responses on such an important subject

[A cruce salus]

  I believe right now we, as a church, we  are behaving much like Peter James and John as they slept through Christ's bitter spiritual struggle in Gethsemane.
 Amen Larry you have made a very good point here. I think we as Adventist have fallen asleep when it comes to prayer, and have missed out on such a blessing. Makes me wonder why there is little power in a lot of our lives to overcome sin.

[newbie]

Recently, we had a study on all the prayers in the bible during our Wed. prayer night.  I found it quite interesting looking and contemplating some of the prayers in the bible.