Some Great Resources On Prayer

9Marks has just released their latest eJournal. You can find a pdf version here or at the 9marks website. This volume pertains to prayer, specifically corporate prayer. We’re trying to become a praying church at CBC where I pastor, and I hope that your church body will too. This 9Marks eJournal will help to that end. There’s some gold here:

On the Use and Importance of Corporate Prayer- An Interview with Mark Dever
A Biblical Theology of Corporate Prayer
Recommendations for Improving Public Prayer
Corporate Aspects of the Lord’s Prayer
Thirty Two Principles for Public Prayer
Sample Corporate Prayers from December 2, 2007
Sample Corporate Prayers from December 9, 2007
Sample Sunday School Class — On Corporate Prayer From the Capitol Hill Baptist “Living as a Church” series

John Piper has some great sermons on prayer:

Prayer Changes People’s Wills

Pray Like This: Hallowed Be Your Name

Prayer: The Work of Missions

This is a great book- “Prayer” by Ole Hallesby

See also D.A. Carson’s “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers“

Bill Mounce ponders prayer here.

Also, each week at CBC we have a community prayer that is listed in our Sunday morning worship bulletin. Our desire is that each week we would collectively be praying this prayer for one another, the missionaries/ministries that we support, the youth and children at CBC, the other churches in Kaufman, etc.

Here are a few examples of our weekly community prayer:

Sometimes we take a prayer explicitly from a prayer of Scripture. For instance, 2nd Thessalonians 2:16-17 “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.”

Other weeks I adapt a prayer from a particular passage. Since we are beginning a study in the book of Colossians this coming Sunday, our community prayer will be adapted from Colossians 1:1-8

“May others hear of our faith in Christ Jesus and the love that we have for one another because of the hope laid up in Heaven for us. May the gospel continue to bear fruit and grow among us and around the world. And may we be faithful servants of others and continue to love one another in the Spirit.”

Many churches have done away with prayer meetings, and we are striving at CBC to truly be a church who prays. We have 3 prayer meetings so far. One on Monday mornings at 6:00 A.M., Wednesday evenings at 6:00 P.M. and we have dedicated one of our Sunday school classes to prayer at 9:30 A.M. Hopefully we’ll add more in the future for those who can’t attend these.

As the rapping theologian MC Hammer said, “We’ve got to pray just to make it today!”