By Matt at The Church of No PeopleDoes your church open the floor on Sunday morning for prayer requests?
What’s the most requested prayer?
My guess is most people want to pray for healing.
Every Sunday we open the floor to prayer requests. Sure, we get a sprinkling of other concerns. But I can always count on the old standby “someone I know is sick” prayer. I almost don’t know if I could give a prayer in front of my church without “lifting someone up” and asking that “healing hand” of the “Great Physician” would “be upon them.”
And yet I dread it when that’s all we have to pray about. It’s apparent why we make health related prayers the most. Being sick is the most obvious problem a person probably has. But I hate just praying for recovery. I want people to know that suffering can glorify God. It’s in the Bible.
This may sound terrible, but when poor old Pope John Paul II was at the end of his
very long life, and the Parkinson’s he had suffered with for a
long time had made him a shell of his former self, and the
biggest mercy he could recieve would be to die and see the Lord, I was appalled to see people on TV saying they were just saying a little prayer that his life would be extended. While you’re at it, go ahead and say a little prayer that poor old Dick Clark does one more heartbreaking New Year’s special.
Sure, those medical prayers are easy to make because health problems are easy to see. For
some reason, it's taboo to point out in a prayer request that someone is raising their kids all wrong, or coveting his neighbor’s maidservant, or has remained spiritually immature for the last 17 ½ years.
Church would get pretty interesting if we started making prayer requests that
really needed to be voiced. Maybe if I had a "joys and concerns" card and a golf pencil handy, I'd feel comfortable dropping a really heavy, wonderfully anonymous prayer in the offering plate.
Thus it is with the feeling of being an extreme cliché that I do something for the very first time on this blog. I have never asked you for prayer before. And the first one I’m asking for is a medical prayer. Hear me out though, because there’s more to it than that.
My Dad is the pastor who taught me what it means to be a pastor – what it means to make big sacrifices, to do the right thing, and to love people in spite of their flaws.
My old man isn’t in the best health, and it worries me. He’s got lots of stuff going on. This morning, the surgeons will repair part of his painful arthritis-damaged spine by replacing several pieces of his neck bones with bones from a deceased donor. It’s amazing how connected your neck is to the rest of your health. He’ll be incapacitated for six weeks. We’re just a little concerned about him.
But I wouldn’t be telling you if that were all of it.
My dad has a zeal for Africa, specifically the physically and spiritually impoverished people of Sudan. He made a solo trip to Sudan a few years ago to preach. His burden for those people has spread to me and many others.
He desperately wants to go back, and we’re convinced he has lots of work to do there. We want to send him to cities, markets, arenas, churches and remote villages to preach to 100,000 people. He will also begin the process of building a school for children who have no place to learn. Our house church is financing and directing his trip as well as the school construction. We've even opened a non-profit group just to manage the campaign. The link is at the top of this site.
My dad is planning to go to Africa in February. In fact, he quit his job in order to go. Then the doctor said they need to fix his neck. His recovery time will go right up until February.
So you see, a lot of dreams, our church’s purpose, 100,000 Africans and a school sort of rest in the hands of a doctor this morning.
As your blogging friend for over a year, can I ask you to say just a three-second prayer for Phil?
Even better, could you leave a little prayer comment? I’d love to go to the hospital this afternoon and show him all the people who are “lifting him up.”
If you did that, I’d be very much obliged to you. And I’ll let you know how it goes.
Comments (11)
Best wishes to your father. *hugs*
We don't have prayer requests on Sunday mornings, but they do have an open prayer mic where people pray for whatever they want. Often, it's prayers of confession, which I find really intriguing, but really cool. It shows our humanity. Sometimes, I feel it's needed.
Anyway, I will pray for Phil.
Father, I pray for Phil. It seems that you have revealed to him Africa, you have placed it on his heart for a reason, I'm sure. I pray for wisdom and knowledge of the doctors this morning as they go in to fix his neck. I pray for recovery for Phil, although it may be painful, may he continue to rejoice in your name. Prepare him for whatever you have for him in the coming months and following Africa. In your most holy name I pray, amen.
I will definitely pray for Phil. We love you Phil!
I hope everything goes well for your father. It seems he has done great work and I hope he can continue.
Dear Lord, I pray that You just put Your healing hands on Phil today and in all of his recovery, so that he may go to Sudan and tell people about Your holiness and Your goodness. Please just take care of him and let him know You're there with him every step of the way.
In Your sons name we pray, Amen
Oh Yes! My Aunt, who has bone cancer at the moment, will be having surgery tomorrow (Fri, Nov. 20). All prayers shall be greatly appreciated!!
According to me there's no greater prayer than the prayer that the Lord will send His workers to plow the fields. We should be passionate about the advancement of the kingdom, not focus on the problems.
When a person gets healed so what?
We praise Jesus, and when he does not, we continue to lose our time praying for his healing.
We are but humans. We can ask God, but God knows. When you spend 2 or 3 days seriously praying for an issue and have no breakthrough, do that perhaps a couple of weeks, then something's wrong!
Just focus on the things where you DO see God being exalted! Sometimes there are things more urgent in God's calendar than what we could think of!
Past week we where about to lose our house. I prayed desperately for a job, got none.
Instead, since the ring of the toilet seat broke, God provided us with a toilet ring.
Little did I know that God was telling me, that I'd be staying here for longer, so I better get another toilet ring.
God still has not provided me with a job, but we still live in this house thanks to the glory of God!
At times we don't understand God's priorities. But we should learn to obey them!
There is no time before in history, when the fields are being infected so much, because there is just noone to plow and harvest the fields!
I will sacrifice a goat for him.
I pray for God's grace upon the surgery and for supernatural healing so your father may be used by Him in powerful ways to spread the gospel. God bless.
Dear Jesus, we trust that everything is in Your sovereign hands - whatever work You have for Phil we know You can and will accomplish through him because You've promised it in 2 corinthians 9:8 "And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work." Keep him safe and protect him from the enemy who we know is out to devour people and to kill, steal, and destroy - Phil is Your child and so the devil has no authority or power over his life and we just claim it so in Your name.
:)
You know, I thank God for doctors, but this post made me think about all the times Jesus healed the sick. He didn't just pray and walk away, hoping the sickness would leave. He himself became the conduit of immediate healing. Not only that, he gave the disciples authority and commanded them to go out and heal the sick. This messes up my theology good.
Dear LORD,
I thank you for Mr. Phil's devotion to you and His desire to reach the people of Africa. I pray that the testimonies of your healing hands would be more than that written by others in the Bible or heard by witnessess afar, but a personal, one-on-one testimony that you still heal! I command this crippling arthiritis out of his body even as I type! We know the power of your Holy Spirit knows no boundaries. Let him BE HEALED FULLY that He may testify of the God of Healing to the nations.
In JESUS name, AMENNNN!
bless you!