Day of Prayer

Join us at any point during the day as we dedicate ourselves to prayer as a church body. Elders will open each hour with Scripture reading and prayer and will invite you to pray for the specific needs of one another, our ministries, and the world. This will be a great opportunity for you to meet elders and fellow believers, trusting together in the Lord through prayer.

Submit prayer cards at the Patio table before or after services on October 4 and 11 or turn your cards in at the Office Center reception desk throughout the week.

Prayer That Never Ceases

One of the marks of Jesus’s public ministry was His prayer life. We see in Luke 5:16 that even in the busyness of His ministry, “He Himself would often slip away to the desolate regions and pray.”

This aspect of His ministry was picked up by His disciples, who were taught by the Lord to pray and made it a central element in their own lives. The very first activity in which the church participated after the Lord ascended into heaven was prayer. We read in Acts 1:14 that all the disciples gathered together and “with one accord were continually devoting themselves to prayer.” When we look at the rest of the book of Acts, we see that prayer was a regular practice of the early church (4:31; 6:6; 9:40; 10:9; 12:12; 13:3; 14:23; 16:25; 20:36).

Throughout the 2,000-year history of the church, prayer continued to be central to its life and mission, no matter what the circumstances. John Chrysostom said, “Prayer is a precious way of communicating with God, it gladdens the soul and gives repose to its affections.” Likewise, Martin Luther contended, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” Jonathan Edwards also claimed, “There is no way that Christians, in a private capacity, can do so much to promote the work ofGod and advance the kingdom of Christ as by prayer.”

This pattern of prayer continues to this day in the church across the world and here at Grace Community Church. Communion with God in prayer is the lifeblood of the church. In the same way that believers throughout history have relied on the Lord through prayer, we too must depend upon the grace of prayer in our everyday lives.

Through prayer, we express our praise, our requests, our concerns, our joys, our trials, and our gratitude for all that He gives us. Prayer is both individual, in our personal communion with God, and corporate, in our collective unity of mind and spirit. As we make prayer a regular practice in our lives, we obey the command in Scripture that exhorts us to “pray without ceasing.” To that end, we invite you to join us on October 17 as we come together as a church body to pray. During this time, we will pray for the ministries of our church, individual prayer requests from our members and missionaries, the future of our church, and much more.

The life and faithfulness of Grace Church are determined by our devotion to prayer. Let us joyfully participate in communion with our God as we follow Christ’s example to step away from the busyness of life to pray.