Pray? Really, are you serious ?

A couple of days ago I was searching church websites trying to help a couple find a church in their area... and to be honest I was quite impressed. It's pretty awesome that Apostolic churches have this opportunity to present themselves in such an appealing and enticing way. I found the sites very informative and quite easy to navigate. I am not that tech savy so I was even more impressed with how user friendy these sites were. Most all were very informative and welcoming.

Each site was very clear on a variety of topics such as, what their churches had to offer, service times and mostly the differnt forms of ministry offered in their assembly. These sites gave me a list of all of the various types of services and opportunities that were available in each church. In all honesty, as I previously said, I was quite impressed.

However, one site in-particular really caught my attention. I thought it was pretty awesome to note that the first ministry listed was free home bible studies. This was followed up with prison ministry etc etc... I don't think I have ever seen these services/ministries offered on any other church website.

Which brings me to my point. On each website the one topic that was talked about the least was prayer. One website showed music practice scheduled for 45 minutes then prayer for the last 15 minutes before church started. As minimal as this was at least they did indicate that prayer was before the service. On most of the web sites there were absolutely no mention of prayer at all and on almost all of the sites prayer isn't presented as a ministry at all.

I do not want to sound like a wet blanket but if we are ever going to see the power of the Holy Ghost demonstrated in our churches and our lives we must first become people of prayer. The New Testament church in the book of Acts converted ten percent of the known world and they didn't even have the use of the internet. We have to wonder... how did they do it?

Well, I'll tell you how. They prayed, and they demonstrated, and they did it in that order. In one situation Jesus told them, "this kind cometh out only by prayer and fasting". The point he was making was that if we are going to help people be delievered and set free from sin then WE MUST PRAY. PERIOD.... If we are going to lead people to Jesus and watch them recieve the Holy Ghost then WE MUST PRAY..... There is not any such thing as revival or harvest without prayer. I'm not talking about some little bedtime prayers. I'm talking about, effectual fervent praying.

I don't care how user friendly a church becomes or how easy it is for people to belong to our "community", if they come to our churches and they don't hear us praying then we are doing something wrong. The praise and worship of most services lasts longer than the alter service. (IF we even have an alter call at all.) It takes us less time to pray for the sick than it takes us to recieve an offering.

You get the point, don't you....???? Maybe?? NO??

Well, You Have Got To Be Kidding Me!