The Power of Prayers

Yesterday, a pastor from Taiwan (but originally, he's from Korea) came to our church to preach, and he said that when he prayed, the Holy Spirit told him that there are only few people praying for our church. We have over 700 people in the Chinese congregation, and it's very dangerous to expand when there are only few people praying for it. Without good prayers, the more people we get, the more shaking it will be.

I think that he is right. Even with a regular prayer life, I seldom pray for my church, my fellowship and my small group in the fellowship. Different from many people, my prayer time is in the early early morning...even before 5am! Every night, I wake up naturally (not by alarm clock) to call Hee to the bathroom and check on Ha (他每天踢被）， and when I go back to my bed, I start to pray. (Laying on the bed may not be a good position to pray, but this is the way that I felt the most comfortable and most doable) Mostly, I pray for my family, friends, and my 事奉, and from time to time, I pray for few singly brothers and sisters and hope that God can give them a partner for life. I even pray for our country, but I almost never mention about our church, our pastor, or our fellowship. In my mind, "somebody" will do that, but now, I realize that many people maybe just like me. They pray, but they don't pray for the church because they thought that "somebody" will do that.

Lacking of prayers may be the reason why comparing with my previous church, fellowship and small group when I was in college, this church may have more resources, but is not as hot spiritually. The fellowship program runs smoothly week after week, but the whole fellowship doesn't seem to be very close, and even the coworkers hardly know each other. We have Bible study very often, but most of the time, we hear a lot of inputs, but not many insights. I'm not blaming anyone because I am one of the people in it, too, and I never pray for it. If the words that we say in the Bible study are not from God, are not back up by our prayers, we just waste each other's time because 知識只能叫人自高自大，並不能造就人。We may know a lot about the Bible, but we may not help each other unless God helps us to do so.

Even though I didn't pray for the church or fellowship, I made sure that I prayed for my 事奉， and I found that with prayers, 事奉is very easy. I am going to lead the singspiration this coming Friday, and I haven't thought of the songs . I prayed this morning (at 4am), and before I knew it, two songs pumped out from my head, and they just matched the theme that I wanted to bring out. With the prayer, I didn't even need to flip through the song book, and it saved me a lot of time. The other example was that I was AWANA speaker two weeks ago because the original speaker was not able to make it for some reason, and I only had two days to prepare for it, so I prayed. When I got the material from Angela, I really thanked God because it was exactly the same message that I prepared in early January for kids' program. I only needed to spend little time to make the story telling into a presentation.

I am also participating in 3rd Sunday service worship team, and I can feel the stronger Spiritual connection with brothers and sisters in that small group even though we are from different fellowship, and we only meet once a week to practice the songs. We only have about 10 people, but many of them are strong spiritually. Yesterday, when we shared and prayed together, Cindy mentioned about the importance of being close of God, and I really appreciated that we have such a good sister in the group (and she is in my prayer for singles. She's a really nice and warm sister.)

Anyways, this is what I thought in my prayers this morning, and god urged me to write the down to remind myself and encourage others.

多禱告，多有能力；少禱告，少有能力；不禱告，沒有能力。我們要常常禱告！