» I’ll probably keep encouraging us to gather for Selah — prayer and music — on Thursday evenings at 7p until it becomes established. It is a beautiful, reflective time and worth the effort to pray as whole-souls, not just brains on a stick. When Lisa and I were young and had small kids, we would sometimes alternate going to prayer, the other staying home. I imagine such a thing is still doable.
» Two classic OT verses on prayer. First, the end of Ezek. 22 “I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none,” and 2 Chron 7:14: “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
» I had a Hebrew professor in seminary who warned us to not misuse such passages, which are speaking to a particular people (Israel) at a particular time. While that’s true, the sense of longing in the heart of God for his people to approach him in prayer is perpetual. You can feel it: “…I sought for a man” and “my people who are called by my name.” Those are the words of a God who longs for us: “do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’?” (James 4:5).
» God wants us closer to him than we are, to know him better than we do, to love him — and to know we are loved by him — more than we now know. All of that is inconceivable apart from prayer. And while individual prayer is good, corporate prayer (the word literally means “body”) is better. It’s only together that we embody the community God envisions (“All the believers were together and had everything in common” Acts 2:44); only together that we are Christ’s body (“so we, though many, are one body in Christ” Rom 12:5); only together that we comprise the community of heaven (“great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” Rev 7:9).
» There are things in this world worth your time. Prayer with the people of God, and soaking in the beauty of his word, is one of those things.