Since September we have been thinking about prayer. Prayer as our connection with God. Confidence in prayer. Abraham’s prayers of intercession. Prayer our first weapon not a last resort. Prayer a game changer. Prayer and healing. Experiencing God’s peace through prayer. Most of the time we have been thinking about our own personal times of prayer. But this morning I want us to think instead about praying with other people: praying together. Many parts of the Bible talk about our individual prayers. But just as many places talk about God’s people meeting to pray together.
Let’s think about the book of Acts.
Even before Pentecost – Acts 1:14 They all joined together constantly in prayer,
The earliest days of the church – Acts 2 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Meeting together for prayer Acts 3:1 One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer—at three in the afternoon.
After the Jewish leaders commanded the apostles not to preach about Jesus any more, we read about the first Christians,
Acts 4:24 they raised their voices together in prayer to God.
4 31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
When Peter was put in prison in Acts 12, God sent an angel to set him free by a miracle. But this was just in response to the first Christians praying together. When Peter was free,
he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Acts 12:12.
I am sure you don’t need any more examples of the importance of Christians praying, not just by ourselves, but praying together. But in case you still need convincing, let me remind you that Jesus himself encourages us to pray together!
‘Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.’ (Matthew 18:19-20)
In those two verses Jesus makes two very clear promises. The second promise (in order of the saying) is that Jesus the Risen Christ is present when believers meet together in some special way in which He is not present with them when they are apart and alone. “Where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.” And this presence of God is linked in some way to the first promise Jesus makes, which is that God the Father will answer the prayers of believers who come together in agreement about what they are praying for. Praying together is more powerful than praying alone and separately.
This truth is already abundantly clear from other parts of Scripture. And here Jesus is specifically promising to bless Christians who meet together and pray together. We pray together in our Sunday services. We pray together in our monthly church prayer meeting. We pray together in our homegroups. Many churches meet together for mornings of prayer and days of prayer. But praying together doesn’t have to be in a group, large or small. Jesus says, “wherever two or three”. The minimum number meeting together to claim these promises is precisely two. And that is what I want us to focus on for the rest of our time this morning: the great blessings of meeting together in twos or threes.
A few weeks ago Bill Turner mentioned the value of prayer partnerships, praying in pairs or in triplets. These have always been an important part of growing churches and I have always encouraged them in my churches, not least because I have found meeting with others so helpful myself. After three months of Sabbatical study in 2008 I wrote a lot about prayer partnerships in my first full-length book, Making Disciples One-to-One.
When two or three people who regularly meet to talk about God and pray together are at roughly the same stage in their Christian experience, writers use expressions like “Prayer Partners”, “Spiritual Friendships”, or “Soul Friends”. Sadly in this individualistic age, many Christians have yet to discover the blessings of meeting with others in pairs or triplets. So today I want to give you Ten Great Reasons for meeting and praying together One-to-one. Any one of these great blessings would be reason enough for believers to begin to meet together and share their spiritual lives in prayer partnerships but today I am going to give you ten.
1. Jesus tells us to pray together
Praying together as a pair or in a triplet is good. Jesus is with us in a special way when we meet. Intercessions carry more power because they are united. Of course, when two or three Christians meet together to pray they don’t just pray. They talk about the Bible and what God has been showing them. They talk through their problems. They share their lives together. Praying for each other is good. Praying through each other’s decisions and problems is good. And having somebody else committed to praying for your personal spiritual growth is guaranteed to be good – because God answers prayer.
2. Anybody can do it!
We can’t always give lots of time to lots of other people – but everybody can give time to just one or two! Even Home Groups can’t be just right for everybody all the time. But meeting One-to-One will always be at just the right level for both. A meeting of just two is totally flexible – you can always get together when you want to.
When two or three people meet with the intention and the expectation of praying together and talking about Christian things, this gives freedom to actually talk about Christ without awkwardness or embarrassment; because that is the very reason you are meeting. And there are things you would be prepared to share One-to-One which you would never share even in a Home Group. You can feel amazingly safe. Going on a journey into unknown territory it always feels better to share that adventure with somebody else than going there by yourself, especially if the other person has been there before.
3. Dialogue teaches the parts monologue can’t teach
Back in the 1990s, I wrote a booklet of resources for Christian education which was published by the Baptist Union. In it I came up with a slogan people seemed to like, stolen of course from a popular advert: “Dialogue teaches the parts monologue can’t teach”. There are all kinds of things which we can learn much better by talking about them and by doing them with other people than just by reading or by listening to a professor or a preacher talking about them. Talking things through with another person brings so many blessings – blessings for you and blessings for person you are meeting with so double the blessings! Talking helps us understand the things we have heard in sermons or read in books. It helps us think through decisions we are making and find ways through problems we face. It brings encouragement in difficult times and helps us keep going when we feel like giving up. And then we pray through all the things we have been talking about.
So often Christians only talk to another person about their faith when problems arise. The wonderful thing about meeting regularly meeting in twos or threes is that in times of trial the relationship of “sustaining friends” already exists.
4. Opening up to each other is opening up to God
If we really mean business with God we need to open up every part of our lives to Him. And an important way of doing this is to open up our lives to other people. Many Christians are afraid of doing this. I am afraid of letting other people see “the real me” because then they would realise (in the words of Michael Caine’s character in the film Educating Rita) “there is less to me than meets the eye”.
But I really do need to let somebody else in on “the real me” because only then, when I am truly being myself, only then can God really begin to change me. Christians need to learn to open up to each other, Sharing emotions, sadness, anger, disappointment or discouragement with each other is the same as sharing these feelings with God. When we have poured out our heart to our friend, and we know our friend understands, then we can be assured that God also has heard and understood us. It is very healthy to have a spiritual context where we can uncork the bottle! And then we pray together about the issues where we are struggling.
5. Confession and absolution helps deal with sin
In the battle against the world, the flesh and the devil, having a Christian friend standing with you can make all the difference. Through history the church has known the value of confession and absolution. Jesus has given to all Christians the authority to declare sins forgiven. As Bill Turner reminded us, James 5:16 makes this invitation. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. In the process of Christian holiness, turning away from sin and being transformed into the image of Christ, every Christian can benefit from having a friend to whom he could confess his or her sins. That friend could offer the blessing of declaring those sins forgiven.
6. Discipleship, like salvation, is intended to be shared
In twenty-first century Western Christianity, the focus in our understanding of salvation is almost entirely individual. We are concerned about our personal relationship with God. In the Bible, salvation is very different. It is corporate. We are saved into the Body of Christ of which each of us is only one single part. We are part of the family of God, being built into the Temple of the Holy Spirit. We are saved together and being disciples is something we are supposed to do together.
Christians can be so individualistic. “It’s my faith and my life, and I can live it as I want to.” That is NOT right. That is the attitude of the footballer who hogs the ball instead of passing it around the team. It’s the attitude of the tuba player who plays in any key he chooses, any notes he wants, ignoring the conductor and the rest of the orchestra and thinks it doesn’t matter. Richard Foster, who wrote Celebration of Discipline, also wrote, “None of us is supposed to live the Christian life alone. We gain help and strength from others.”
We know we should be more motivated and committed than we are to praying. It’s good to pray when we feel like it – it is even better to pray when we don’t feel like it, and even in times when we feel we cannot pray at all, because we have made the commitment to God and to the other person that we will meet.
7. Seeing Christ in each other
In his book, “Tortured for Christ”, Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand wrote that when he was imprisoned for his faith, he saw the suffering of his fellow prisoners and asked, “If that were Christ, would you give Him your blanket?” The parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25:31-46 reminds us that when we love and serve our neighbour we are loving and serving Christ Himself. Somebody once asked Mother Teresa of Calcutta how she could work with the untouchables and the sick and the dying? Her answer was that she sees Jesus in each one of the people she helps. So as she serves and cares for those who are dying she is serving and caring for Christ Himself. The best way to learn to see Christ in others is to develop a close relationship with a fellow Christian. Meeting with Christ in another person is a wonderful way of experiencing the presence of Christ in ordinary everyday life.
8. Things “better caught than taught”
There are many things in life which we learn by watching others. The piano teacher, the driving instructor, the personal trainer and the life coach all show us HOW TO do what we want to do. The best way to learn to speak French is to spend time with a French person. So also in the Christian life there are individuals who inspire and encourage us by their passion in prayer, their boldness in evangelism, their commitment to holiness and their complete devotion to God. From their examples we learn skills, attitudes character. We learn hospitality, patterns of prayer and devotional reading. We learn how to cope with life. We seek to imitate their work/life/church balance. We are fired by their wisdom, zeal and love. They are our role models. We catch their faith. And as other people share their lives with us, we learn from them how to share our own life with other people. And the best place for this kind of Christian learning and growing is One-to-One, praying in a pair or a triplet. I am so grateful for so many ways I have benefitted over the years from meeting with other Christians, some ministers and others not.
9. Exercising Spiritual Gifts
The safety of a One-to-One relationship is the perfect context for learning how to recognise God’s voice and deliver God’s messages. The Bible teaches the prophet-hood of all believers. Every Christian has received that Holy Spirit who inspired the prophets so potentially every Christian may exercise prophetic gifts (Acts 2:17-18; 38-39). Meeting and praying together One-to-One is a wonderful place to explore listening to God and exercising spiritual gifts like prophecy.
10. God gives us other Christians so we can practise His kind of love
A very good way to learn to love your enemies is to practise by loving your friends! God gives us other Christians so we can learn to love and accept and forgive each other. The challenge of just making space for somebody else in our busy lives is good for us as we learn to really listen to them so that we will better at listening to others. We need to practise helping others. We need to learn how to to be Jesus to other people. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20)
Again, many of us find it incredibly difficult to talk to other people about Jesus. Sharing our story One-to-One with our prayer partners is good practice for sharing with Home Group, then with other friends, then with strangers.
So there you are – 10 Great Reasons for meeting together with one or two other Christians to pray and study and talk.
1. Jesus tells us to pray together.
2. Anybody can do it!
3. Dialogue teaches the parts monologue can’t teach
4. Opening up to each other is opening up to God
5. Confession and absolution helps us deal with sin
6. Discipleship, like salvation, is intended to be shared
7. Seeing Christ in each other
8. Things “better caught than taught”
9. Exercising Spiritual Gifts
10. Practising showing God’s kind of love to other Christians
With so many great reasons for meeting One-to-One, it is hard to think why every Christian would not be meeting regularly with others in a prayer partnership or a prayer triplet. And it is so easy to start! Just pray about who you could meet with, and ask them. Don’t dilly dally. Just do it! Remember the wonderful promises about praying together which Jesus makes to all of us.
“Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”
(Matthew 18:19-20)