"Prayer Together"

Dear WRC,

Easter morning starts pretty early for me. I’m up and ready and out the door by 6am to setup for our sunrise service. When that service finishes, it’s home briefly for more coffee, a few minutes with the kids, and back to the sanctuary to get ready for the next one. There is always a lot to practice and prepare—especially on Easter!—but at about 9:20 something happened that happens almost every Sunday at that time. A couple elders politely interrupted what I was doing and asked if I was ready to go pray with them before the service.

I’m so grateful for these invitations to let things be and go do something far more important. We headed in a line back to the quiet room. After some Easter greetings, we began to pray. I started, and when I finished, around the circle we went. Each heart responding in a different way. Each voice lifting up a different prayer. Some were short, some were long, all were genuine and integrated. Each one was a gift.

As your pastor I am often looked to when it’s time to pray, but boy do I love to hear you instead. It’s not because I don’t want to, but my heart is so blessed to bear witness to the conversation you’re having with our God. It’s a window into your heart, into your soul. Beyond the privilege and intimacy of it, though, it is also just heartening to me. It gives me joy and encouragement. It’s hard to put into words, but like a good Easter dinner, afterwards I felt full. God was with us in the room and together we had fixed our attention on him. I wasn’t alone, but was in the company of saints who also knew they needed God if they had any hope of anything. Saints who want to pray, not to make God show up, but to help each other remember that he’s already here.

I thought you should know that you have Elders who pray for you, for me, for our worship and witness. I thought you should know they don’t take any of this lightly. I thought you should know that they regularly do what Jesus did with his disciples, pulled them away from the hubbub to be alone together in prayer. But mostly, I wanted you to know that it was beautiful and a profound blessing to me.

I hope your Easter was filled with joy, good food, and good company! I was grateful to see so many of you in worship over the course of the weekend. I pray that those services were a blessing to you. I pray, too, that you’ll catch a glimpse of God’s resurrection power in your life this week so you can scoff in the face of the Dragon.

In Christ,
Pastor Andy