Let’s offer up to God 20,000 hours of prayer in 2023!

From the Pastor’s Desk (266)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

God made us to have love relationship with us. Where there is love relationship, there is conversation. Therefore, we converse with God because He loves us and we love Him back. We call this conversation with God prayer.

God chose to use our prayer to do His work. When we pray something happens. When we don’t pray, nothing happens. Therefore, people of God all throughout the Scripture prayed. When good things happened to them, they offered up to God the prayer of thanksgiving. When they sinned against God, they offered up to God the prayer of repentance. When they were faced with a trouble, they prayed to God asking Him for help. When they wanted to do something for God, they offered up to God the prayer of commitment. God’s people prayed to Him for and in all circumstances.

“17 Pray continually…” (1 Thess. 5:17)

“1 As for other matters, brothers and sisters, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you. 2 And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil people, for not everyone has faith.” (2 Thess. 3:1-2)

For 2023, I would like for us to focus on prayer and offer up to God 20,000 hours of prayer in our sanctuary, a special place of our Sunday corporate worship. We can’t do this alone as an individual. Each one of us has just 8,760 hours a year. This means, even if we do nothing but pray 24/7, 365 days, we can’t pray for 20,000 hours alone individually. However, if we do this as a church family, then this is more than doable.

As usual, I don’t want to ask you to do something that I am not doing in my own personal life. I also don’t want to ask you to do something that is ridiculously unreasonable. However, I will and do ask you to do something that is challenging and stretching but very doable if you put your heart and mind to it.

I was told that New Life has more than 600 registered members. (Now, why we have just about 500 people coming out to worship on Sunday, I don’t know. In 2023, I will contact each registered member and find out what his/her situation is. If they are no longer with New Life, their names will be taken off. If they are being non-committal, then they will be challenged, and their membership status may even be taken away.) If all of us pray for an hour each week in this sanctuary, then we can easily pray for 20,000 hours collectively as a church family. (450 members x 1 hour/week x 52 weeks = 23,400 hours of prayer!!!)

Why am I asking you to come out to the sanctuary to pray? It’s because Jesus often prayed that way.

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” (Mark 1:35)

There will be “20,000 Hours of Prayer in 2023” chart on the wall next to the world map in our fellowship hall. Each time you pray for an hour in the sanctuary in 2023, please write your initial in one box in an orderly manner from top to bottom, left to right. If you can pray just for half of an hour each time, then you can still write your initial in one box after you pray for two halves of an hour. If you pray for two hours, then you obviously write your initials in two boxes back-to-back.

All of us without any exception have reasons to pray because we are all going through something that we can’t control, handle or solve on our own strength. We need God and His help. Let’s come before the Lord through our prayer more than we have ever done before and experience His grace, mercy, love, wisdom and power in times of our need.

“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Heb. 4:16)

Our God is good and great. He will give us the help that we need exactly at the time that we need it the most.

Your pastor,

Eric