In the Bible, we see pastors devoting themselves to God’s word, prayer, equipping God’s people and providing leadership to church. Therefore, prayer is one of my main responsibilities and I try to take it seriously. It also is one of my great joys in pastoral ministry. I routinely work about 60 hours a week and prayer takes up about 15-20% of my work hours. The rest is approximately divided up 35%, 30% and 15% in the order of God’s word, equipping God’s people and providing leadership to church.
I use various things to pray for you. Using the prayer request form that I give out to you at the end of each year and collect in January, I pray for everyone who turns one in for a whole year. I also use the back of the Sunday bulletin where all the names of house churches and shepherds are listed to pray for each shepherd and his family members. Each shepherd is also asked to prayerfully compile together with his house church members their VIP list so I can use it to pray for them. And lastly, I use the communication cards that you turn in each Sunday to pray for you. These prayer requests are usually urgent, requiring intense and focused prayers for certain duration of time.
For quite some time, I wanted to pray for you who needed prayers immediately after Sunday corporate worship. This would have been a very natural extension of worship. In order to start this ministry more officially, I tried to find and purchase some praying altars. I had a difficult time finding the ones that we could use at New Life. Amazingly, Chris Kim, our Admin Team leader, found out that Chris Kim from Raham HC could make them. Now, thanks to both Chris’, we have five beautiful custom-made praying altars for us to use during worship.
The Bible emphasizes the importance of public confession of our sins and needs as well as public profession of our faith in Jesus. That’s why Jesus often had people reveal their needs in public before they received healing from him and allowed Zacchaeus to confess his sins publicly. He also said, “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38) Therefore, it is a beautiful and biblical thing to stand in front of people, both believers and unbelievers, to confess our sins, reveal our needs and profess our faith in Jesus through baptism.
At the bottom of the front of your communication card, there is a place where you can write down your urgent prayer request that you would like for me to pray for a week. Also, at the top of the back of your communication card, there are several boxes you can check off before you turn it in. Some of these boxes have to do with you making some kind of commitment before God.
If you write down your prayer request or check off some boxes and turn your communication card in during Giving back to God Time, I will use it to pray for you or follow up on you the next week. However, if you have an urgent prayer request or would like to make a resolute commitment before God, and you would like for me to pray for you shortly after benediction, write it down or indicate it on your communication card and come down to and kneel at a praying altar with your communication card in your hand. I will go to each one of you and pray for you based on what you wrote or indicated on your communication card.
Due to time constraint, we will not be able to have this time of prayer on Sundays when we have baptism. Also, the pastor who preaches on that Sunday will pray for people who come out to the altar.
I look forward to praying for you not just during my early morning prayer time but also on Sundays right after worship. Let’s expect God to do some special and amazing things as we obey Him more fully and completely!
Your pastor,
Eric
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