Why pray together

I really didn't know what to expect; as far as I was concerned this was just another chance to be with my new-found InterVarsity friends. I was a young Christian, the fruit of much prayer by the InterVarsity chapter members at my school, and just catching on to all the "Christian stuff.

My prayers were simple. I couldn't pray as eloquently as the others, but they didn't seem to mind. Slowly, my interest in prayer began to grow.

Little did I know that God was also lighting a fire under the rest of our small prayer group to tell others about praying together. We urged others in the chapter to join us. Then we moved the prayer meetings to a more convenient place and time and enlivened the format. In large-group meetings, we told how God was answering prayer. We sent personal invitations to remind people about our prayer meetings.

Our chapter president circulated prayer requests every week with those who were highly committed to prayer not just at the prayer meetings. God taught us to rely on him in new ways that year.

He responded to our prayers about people's jobs and health, our chapter's plans and goals, our personal growth and our outreach to the campus. One night a few of us were gathered informally in a friend's dorm room. We just started to worship God in song and to pray for three individuals on that floor to become Christians. All three yielded their lives to Jesus the following week! Answers to our prayers weren't always that spectacular, but God's hand was evident at our prayer meetings every day.

Chapter prayer grew from that humble beginning of three people my junior year to include nearly half of our chapter by the end of my senior year. Since then, I've learned our chapter's story isn't that unusual -- most InterVarsity chapters wrestle with getting people to pray together. Is it really that important? The works of God begin and end in prayer. The story takes place after they had been sent two by two into villages casting out demons and healing the sick.

I wonder if the disciples attacked this demon issue cavalierly or routinely. They knew the words to say, the steps to take. But nothing worked because they were not prayed up enough. Their faith was not there as a result. There is a clear connection between prayer and faith beyond the fact that we are supposed to pray in faith. I believe the most significant thing that is lost in a church that does not have corporate prayer is faith.

There is simply no expectation that God will do the miraculous. One of the main reasons most churches are stagnant and do not see God at work in miraculous ways in their midst is that most churches and individuals do not know what it is to pray in faith anymore.

But faith grows as we pray together. In the midst of it, I try to pray with trust and faith, but it is difficult because I only see the issue. If I go and pray with others, however, what happens? As I listen to others pray with more faith than I have, my faith grows. I begin to pray with others regarding this. God can now put a heart of trust in me, He can bring me to unity with others, He can give me the faith to believe Him for the miraculous—His vision and plan for my church.

When I only pray by myself, that is less likely to happen. Churches that do not pray together still minister in whatever ways they can, given their resources, abilities, and sacrifices.

But churches that pray together begin to see the miraculous power of God at work in their midst. It goes beyond what they can and should do into what God wants to do through them. A number of leaders from Northpoint Church near St. Louis were there.

A year or so after his presentation, Dave received an email from its prayer leader. In it, he shared what God had been doing in their church since the gathering.

The prayer meeting grew in number of attendees. Less than a year after increasing the prayers, they were well in the black and more than were coming to services each week. If you increase the level of praying together among your congregation, you will see more miracles happen as your faith rises.

They start to let go of their desires to see their purposes fulfilled and start to open themselves up to what God wants. The value of this to a church is huge when it comes to ministry and decision making. Years ago, I was a part of a church plant in Colorado Springs that was meeting in a school. We felt the Lord leading us to purchase land. We found two pieces of property—one was very close to the school and forty-two of our families, the other was three to four miles away.

That distance was not a big deal, but it was not in the neighborhood we had been ministering in for the past five years.

Evidently God has designed prayer to especially require we pray together. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane when facing the greatest crisis of His life, the looming shadow of a cross, even then He asked the disciples to watch with Him.

In every way, He modeled and commanded the necessity of praying together. However, I wanted to test this truth in other ways. Knowing that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, I decided to look at the pattern of the Bible as a whole. Another very surprising dynamic emerged. Proof Three: The Pattern of Scripture before and after the resurrection. I sought to answer this question, Did the mighty moves of God come primarily through the prayer life of an individual or two, or more believers?

Both the Old and the New Testament record examples of private and corporate prayer, and God exercised His power through both examples. However, it quickly became apparent that a defining moment, a spiritual watershed divided the way God worked. In the Old Testament, God usually chose an individual through which He communicated or exercised His power in response to prayer. For example, God only spoke with Abraham about the promised son Gen Moses was by himself on Mount Sinai interceding for the people when God decided that He would forgive them Ex Joshua by himself apparently cries out for the sun to stand still Josh No one other than Samson pleaded with God and the temple came tumbling down Jud Of course, corporate prayer does exist in the Old Testament such as the case of the temple dedication and revivals; but even then it is exercised in a markedly different manner from the New Testament.

For example, typically the pattern for the Old is that the people cry out to God, but the answer does not come to anyone but the judge or the prophet twice the prophetess, perhaps directly to the king on occasion.

Most often kings seem dependent on hearing from the prophet 1 Kings , 2 Sam , 1Chr , 2 Chr , , Is , etc. Likewise, the people of God consulted the man of God 1 Sam because they do not hear for themselves.

God usually did not answer them directly, but primarily communicated with them through the prophet, an intermediary. In the New Testament this radically changes. In the Book of Acts the are gathered in an upper room praying in one accord when Pentecost comes Acts , They prayed over the seven chosen to serve the widows Acts Peter and John interceded for those who had not received the Holy Spirit yet and He came Acts Peter was in prison but the church was fervently pleading with God for him Acts While the prophets and teachers were praying and fasting, the Holy Spirit called Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey Acts Then the church prayed before sending them out Acts Paul and Barnabas commended the new churches to God by prayer Acts Paul and his companions were going to prayer when Paul cast the demon out of the slave girl Acts Paul prayed with all the Ephesians in his farewell address Acts Finally, they prayed with the disciples from Tyre Acts Again the goal is not to deny the role of individual prayer.

Ananias was praying alone when he was told to go to Saul Acts Peter was on the rooftop by himself when he had his famous vision leading him to Cornelius Acts Under the Old Covenant the people of God conducted their relationship with Him through the law.

Because the veil was not rent, they did not have access to the Holy Spirit in the same way we do today. As I mentioned earlier, when God wanted to speak to His people, no one except the prophets or a few leaders could directly interact with God. That radically changed under the New Covenant. Every child of God has equal access to the throne of God, not just a few select individuals.

We could all be like millions of radios — all receiving transmissions from a tower, but individual, separate, stand alone units.

But Scripture teaches that the moment God saves us, we are baptized by the Holy Spirit into one body 1 Cor The foundation of our new spiritual life requires interdependence — of course, interdependence does exist in the Old Testament, but not in the same sense.

Never is the analogy of a body used for the people of God until the birth of the church. The baptism into the Holy Spirit so intricately joined us together that we are no longer independent units fitted together, rather we are most like flesh and sinew. Although our roles and functions vary, God does not allow us to conduct our personal relationship with Him in isolation. He has ordained that our service in Christ requires teamwork with others.

Focusing on the personal prayer life only would be equivalent to trying to play Mozart with one hand. All ten fingers prove absolutely necessary to create the music. Likewise, the new covenant with its body-life spills over into every aspect of our relationship with God and others, demanding that we practice both personal and corporate prayer.

The Scriptural evidence proved convincing, but I also decided to test history. I applied the same basic question Since the resurrection, when have the greatest moves of God primarily occurred? A study of church history and asking experts confirmed my expectations. In fact, I did not discover a single example in which the church transformed the culture when Christians did not spend significant time praying together.

Here are a few examples. In America was in the middle of a strong economy. As is so often the case in prosperity, morals began slipping and a decreased interest in the things of God prevailed. Alarmed by the spiritual state of affairs, a Dutch Reformed layman named Jeremiah Lamphier tacked up notices in New York City calling for a weekly prayer meeting on Wednesdays from noon till one.

The first week, only six showed up and none of them before The next week, though, the attendance jumped to twenty. Then the numbers nearly doubled again, and on the fifteenth day they began meeting every weekday to pray.

About that time Wall Street crashed. So great and so immediate were the changes that in less than six months time more than 10, — 50, businessmen were meeting daily in New York to pray during the noon hour.

Inexplicably, that little, inauspicious prayer meeting Lamphier started became the pattern God used. The movement leapt to every single major city in America by early The response of God to His people was that 1,, Americans out of a population of 30,, were converted in less than two years. At the height of revival, perhaps 50, a week were being saved.