Prayerful Witness

Can I get a witness?  We all need witnesses to life: to joy, to pain, to hope, to sorrows, to love, to loss, to breath, and to death.  We all need witnesses to life.  Why?  Because in searching out others to share life and witness to life happening, we are fulfilling the deep desire of God’s proclamation against the first thing in creation called ‘not good’: that man is alone.  We were designed to live in community, in relationships, in witness to life!  What do you need a witness to?

One of these greatest ways that we can be witnesses to each other is prayer partnerships.  When we lift up one another in prayer, we bear witness to the joys we share, to the pains we carry, to the hopes we have, to the sorrows we endure, to the love we hold, the losses we suffer, to the breaths we take, and to the deaths we die.  So, first I encourage you to pray.

Second, I encourage you to pray sincerely.  Like the old Nike campaign said, ‘Just do it.’  Don’t wait.  Just do it.  Take the time to connect with each other and be witnesses to God.  How?  Pray right then and there.  It’s not so that God knows; because God already knows.  Rather, pray so that you let the other person know you have been listening; deeply listening, or more precisely witnessing to their life.  For witnessing is what God does to all of us.  God has been paying attention to humanity since our creation: hearing the blood of Abel cry out from the ground, seeing/witnessing Hagar’s plight in the desert after being cast out by Abram, and responding to the cries of the people of Israel enslaved in Egypt.  Sincerity in prayer is real time witness with God for what has been happening in the lives of others.

Third, I encourage you to keep it going.  After we pray for another, find a way to remind yourself to follow up with them.  This is the enrichment of the witnessing relationships we have planted in prayer.  It might be a few days later.  It could be a week later.  Whatever it is, follow up.  For this extends the relationship and roots it deeper between the people.

Why do I bring this up?  Because this holy work is always before us; and it draws closer.  We must do this work in and amongst each other.  Next, I am excited to announce to you that on August 8th, we’ll host a Back to School Bash outside the pavilion.  We’ll have fun playing games and making crafts.  Yet we’re not stopping there!  I need your presence that day to help me offer prayer, blessings, and relationships that day.  As we offer a fun time to families, we’ll also offer them prayer and a place within our hearts to care about them so that they know God’s witnessing to their lives.  Why?  Because as you have been witnessed to and prayed for by one another, so now is the time for us to do that beyond our walls and into the community.