Pray the Word
If you were going to give instructions to a young pastor about how to organize a church service, what would be your first instruction? I would be tempted to begin with something like, “Make sure the transitions are smooth,” or “pick songs that are God-glorifying,” or even “focus on your preaching.” I don’t think these things are bad. It is certainly important to strive for a smooth service with little distractions in which you sing biblical songs and hear preaching from the word. But Paul, in his letter to the young pastor Timothy, began with some different instructions. He wrote,
“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people…” (1 Tim. 2:1).
Paul’s first instruction to Timothy about leading church life was to pray the Word. Prayer is how we, as believers, depend on the Lord. We speak to God from the heart, asking God to make good on his promises for ourselves, others, and our church. We thank God for who He is and what He has already done through Christ Jesus. We confess our sins to God and ask for His continued forgiveness. We pray for one another when fellow church members are sick or suffering. We ask God for opportunity and boldness to share the gospel with the lost. Paul seemed to expect Timothy to practice all of these prayers in the context of the local church gathering.
God, in His grace, has designed prayer in our church service to benefit us in several ways. Let me highlight a few:
1) Prayer in the service teaches us how to pray. Kids learn by imitation. Adults do too (we’re just slower at it). Each time we pray in our service, we hope to model what prayer looks like. In reality, everything we do in our church service teaches something, and our prayers teach as well. Listen to Mark Dever,
“Everything that happens up front in church is part of the teaching ministry of the church. You are either teaching the members of your congregation how to pray biblically, teaching them how to pray poorly, or teaching them not to pray at all, simply by how much time you carve out in the service for prayer and how you fill that time.”
We have some specific times in our service carved out for prayer. We have a “Call to Worship” prayer that is focused on praising God and preparing our own hearts for worship. We have an “Offertory Prayer” that is focused on thanksgiving for all God has done for us and asking for wisdom to be good stewards of those gifts. We have a “Pastoral Prayer” led by an elder that is focused on praying for needs in our church body and preparing our hearts and minds to hear the word. Then we have a prayer at the end of the sermon focused on enabling us by the Spirit to respond in faith to the word that was preached. How else might we model prayer in our service each Sunday? Perhaps we need a prayer of confession.
2) Prayer in the service unifies the church. As we pray together, we are united in our dependence on God. We all, at the same time, with the same words, say, “We need you, Lord.” Through prayer together, we all corporately reset our priorities to the things of the Lord and ask Him to work among us, not just in our own individual lives.
These are only two of the endless benefits to praying together in our service each Sunday. The best way we can learn to pray together is to look in Scripture. Jesus teaches us to pray. The Psalms teach us to pray. Other faithful saints in the Bible teach us to pray. This is why we will most often pair praying the Word with reading the Word. If we let God have the first word, then we can pray in response to what we have just heard.
Let us always be a praying church, not just in our homes, but in our service; and may our worship be pleasing in God’s sight.
Pastor Mark