Are you ever reluctant to ask for prayer, to share a need in your life, a struggle? James reminds us that “…you do not have because you do not ask.” Often people share with me that they really don’t know how to pray. Well, you’re in great company because one day when Jesus was praying, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” In response, Jesus taught them what we call The Lord’s Prayer.
While prayer is obviously more than about presenting “a wish list” to God, James reminds us that prayer is the way that we communicate with our creator and in his epistle shares with us that the most common problems in prayer, like asking for the wrong things, or asking for the wrong reasons. We’ll be talking more about that soon in our Sunday morning sermon series as we continue to walk through the book of James verse by verse together.
Did you know that prayer is mentioned 250 times in scripture and that Jesus spent a great deal of time in prayer, often going off by Himself to pray? Yet for many Christians prayer can be a challenge, a struggle. For those who are new to the faith, some wonder how to even start.
At St. Matthews, every Sunday we have an opportunity to share “prayer requests” which Kathy Kowaleski prays over during the service. Those prayers are then emailed to our 180 member prayer chain who prays for them during the week. If you would like to become a member of that prayer team, contact Lynette Archibald. During the week, if there are emergencies that come up, you can submit a prayer request to the prayer chain by emailing Lynette, Christine Comeau or Beth Soucise.
A New Prayer Team at St. Matthews
In addition, we are developing a team of people to be available after the service at St. Matthews to pray with you. If you would like to find out more about our new prayer ministry or to become part of the team, please join us after the service on February 19 for an information meeting in the sanctuary or email Kathy Kowaleski or call Kathy at 603-264-3768. Prayer is critical to our Christian faith walk!
Congratulations Patriots ... Super Bow Champions!
Congratulations to the New England Patriot’s for winning not only the first overtime game in Super Bowl history but the biggest comeback ever. As Christians there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from this game including Never Give Up! I’m sure some of those lessons will surface as illustrations in upcoming sermons. But, the image that will remain with me for a long time is special teams captain Matthew Slater during Super Bowl Week unapologetically sharing his faith in Jesus Christ. Slater is the spiritual leader of Patriot’s and holds a prayer service before the game with some of the players. “My faith is the core pillar in my life. It comes before anything,” said Slater. “It’s something from a very young age that has given me direction and purpose beyond what I do professionally.” There are, of course, others on the Patriots who share Slater’s faith such as tackle Nate Solder and safety Devin McCourty. As Christians we would do well to take a page from Slater’s playbook and be as eager to share our faith as well because someone needs to hear your faith story today. Just saying!
See you Sunday at 8:45.