Prayer
So what does it mean to be a praying church?
"Prayer is the supreme way to be workers together with God" Wesley L. Duewel
At the beginning of 2005, we felt God say He wanted us to be a praying church. This wasn’t to say we hadn’t seen prayer as important before, but it was a call to put prayer right at the very heart of all we do in Open Heaven. We might have some great ideas and projects but without prayer at the top of the agenda, we’re not going to be fully effective in building God’s Kingdom.
The heart of prayer is relationship. We desire to be a people who have a real depth of relationship with God, marked out by our total and utter dependence on him.
We want prayer to be woven throughout the life of this Church. Some of the ways we’ve done this is to make sure that every project that is started is covered in prayer. When people become Christians we make sure that two or three others in the Church are praying daily for their growth especially in the first six months. We have created a prayer network where prayer requests can very quickly be passed round to the rest of the Church.
There are also different prayer events that happen in the life of the Church...
Prayer for Nations
We meet to pray for those who have been sent from OH overseas. Its also an opportunity to pray for some of the unreached people groups in the world
Prayer for the Leadership Team
It is really important that the leaders are regularly covered in prayer. An e-mail will be sent out regularly to a group of people who have said that they would like to pray for the leadership team. If you’d like to commit to regularly pray for the leadership team please let Jez know.
Open Heaven Prayer Events
At different times in the year we have had more focused periods of prayer. We have prayed non stop for a week (24/7) and we’ve had ½ nights of prayer. More recently we had a Week of Prayer where each cell met every morning and prayed for the coming day, and there was continuous prayer at the office throughout the day. The aim was to go deeper in prayer by inviting God into every aspect of our lives.
Prayer Network
The prayer network is an e-mail network that allows any specific prayer requests you have, to get passed round to the Church very quickly. If you have a prayer request that you’d like the rest of church to get behind in prayer, then post it up and also forward it to Jez who will then distribute it via the prayer network.