Is prayer solitary or corporate? For those of you who are seasoned prayer warriors, intercessors, this may be a simple answer. For this morning, it gave me pause.
Of course, God knows our hearts. Yet he asks us to come boldly before the throne of grace where we have mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. This seems to be personal.
In another passage, we are commanded to confess our faults to each other and pray for one another that we may be healed. The suggestion that healing is necessary means something is sick or distorted, not only through natural means but through disregard or abuse.
Sickness takes on many forms. Disease or improper nutrition affects our physical body. Chemical imbalance or wrong thinking affects our mind. Lack of exercise and proper sleep wreaks havoc with our emotions. Addictions affect our will and ravage our body. Confessing our part in what we have not properly stewarded or ways in which we have intentionally sinned would indicate that prayer over these is done in intimate relationship in the mutual and interchangeable roles of confessor to intercessor. This can be one-on-one or small group settings.
It is the corporate prayer in our large gatherings that has me thinking. There are many types of prayer, or many parts which can exist at every level. I will be mulling this over the next while and hope to express my thoughts here in another post.
How do you see prayer in a corporate setting?
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