Experimental Prayer (As a Communal Experience)

For the last month or so, I’ve been praying with my small group and my accountability partner Sarah that God will increase our love for Him every day. To me it’s kind of an experiment. I pray this with the expectation to see tangible changes in our walk with Christ. It may sound oxy-moron to expect the result when you pray, but truthfully my prayer life has been rather timid in the past. For the fear of being disappointed and/or my concerns not mattering to God, I always had reservations when I prayed. That way if my prayer is not answered, I can put up my proper Christian façade and say “I guess that wasn’t in God’s will. It is well with my soul (NOT!)”

Anyway, praying collectively works pretty well for this situation because;

1. If I forget to pray one day, somebody else’s praying for me so I’m covered.
2. I can’t very easily quit praying even when I don’t see the result right away and get discouraged.
3. We can witness the changes in each other’s lives.

I believe the basis of our walk with Christ should be the personal relationship with Him. But it is also essential for our spiritual growth to have a community of people, who we can love, encourage, accept, learn from, and bear burden for each other FOR REAL. Since human is created to be a social being, I think it’s natural that the experience we share with others can be in some ways more solid and intense than what we experience in solitude. Great things God does in my life do not remain just “my” personal story, but they become “our” story in the community. My joy becomes our joy.

It’s ideal if you had a community of people who you can physically spend time with, but especially through my experience with JCFN, I came to appreciate communities that form online as well.

In any case I pray that everyone who took time to read this note is a part of a loving community. May our love for God increase in us daily, and it would overflow and bless those around us =)

Peace,

-Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:24-