Praying as a Community
If you’re on our mailing list, then this week you will have started receiving our daily prayer point emails, which will be sent throughout March. The idea behind these prayer points is to encourage us to pray together as a church community. As we look towards a time where we may be able to meet up again in person, as we continue to discern God’s vision for HT, and as we gear up for our centenary celebrations, it is perhaps more important than ever to place prayer at the centre of all we do at HT.
Pentecost
There are several examples in the Bible of communities praying together and great things happening as a result. The one that springs most readily to mind is the story of Pentecost in Acts (Acts 2:1-41). The Church itself starts with a group of believers meeting together and dedicating themselves to prayer. Through prayer, the Holy Spirit descends on them and they are equipped to preach the gospel, and take God’s Word out to all they meet.
Of course, the point here is not that prayer was used as a wish-granting exercise. I’m sure many of the early Christians would not have wished for a lot of the hardships that befell them in their ministries. Instead, their prayers were likely to have been much simpler and along the lines of, ‘What on earth do we do now?’
Remember, this came after a time of massive upheaval for the disciples. Jesus had been executed, then resurrected; He had then ascended to heaven, leaving them with the commandment to make disciples of all nations.
That had never been done before. There were no sending churches, or mission models for them to follow, just God’s Word and their own experiences of it. They were gathered in that upper room out of fear as much as faith. I’m sure a lot of them would have been praying for safety and security, but God took them out of their comfort zones and did amazing things through them, all of which was made possible because they were, first and foremost, grounded in prayer as a community.
Praying for HT
This is what we want for HT – to be grounded in prayer as a community over the coming weeks. As such, there are some opportunities for prayer that you can get involved with:
Daily Prayer Emails – If you don’t yet receive our email updates, why not sign up with the form below and, during March, receive a daily prayer point to help focus your prayers for the day on an aspect of church that we will be praying for together, albeit in our separate homes.
Zoom Prayers – Join us on Zoom at 7:30pm on Monday 8th March, and again on Monday 22nd March, for 45 minutes of prayer together.
Online Services – don’t forget you can join with us every Sunday morning at 11:00am at https://htj.online.church for our services. Feel free to use the Live Chat and Prayer Request section to stay connected with us and to share prayers as you need.
by Rachael Farrimond