When praying in a corporate prayer meeting ask God to help you to forget everybody else. You’re not there to impress others with your praying. You’re not there to be eloquent as the Pharisees were. Your prayers don’t have to be fancy or perfect. Remember prayer is the expression of the heart to God so we need to learn to be free and to be ourselves. We need to learn to be specific in prayer.
Two most important factors, I think, in a group prayer meeting or a church prayer meeting is: Ask God to help you to forget everybody else. You’re not there to impress others with your praying. You’re not there to be eloquent. Your prayers don’t have to be fancy or perfect. They don’t have to be even theologically accurate the way you’d want them. You know prayer is the expression of the heart to God. So we need to learn to be free. We need to learn to be ourselves. We need to learn to target in prayer. You know maybe if we come to pray to a prayer meeting we ought to prepare and say, you know, I’m going to pray for two people tonight, or two specific things. Or if there’s prayer requests that come forth, I’m going to grab onto one of those or maybe two of them and I’m just going to target those. And I’m going to be specific. And I’m just going to beseech the LORD to work.
If you have a group of ten Christians or thirty or fifty Christians, who are praying and you have a corporate time of prayer, if they’ll pray that way then they’ll just get down to business. And one brother prays for this family that’s in need. “Lord, would you work in them? Here they are. You know their need. We’re coming to ask you to do this for them.” To maybe pray some Scripture if it’s natural to do so. Because you know you’re praying the mind of God when you do that. But specifically just go and make petition and request. And make your time brief. It’d be better to go shorter and be effectual. And you consider your brothers, you’re giving others time to pray.
And then later, if there’s a lull and you can pray a second time then jump in there and do it. But I think if Christians together would forget about the self consciousness, consider their brethren. To pray brief short prayers at times. And maybe if you get a real burden for something, you know, it’d be fine to pray for one or two minutes. But five minutes doesn’t sound like a long time and it’s not when you are praying alone. But if somebody prays for five minutes in a corporate prayer meeting, it can ruin the spirit of the prayer meeting. Because they began to dominate. And others can lose interest or they afterward they don’t know what to pray, you know.
So, it’s being sensitive about that you have brothers and sisters there that God wants to pray also is really important. Don’t let the prayer meeting ever be about your praying or how long you do it. Or eloquence or fanciness. No. Just brevity, target and being real and honest. And learning that when you go to pray you can learn to discipline yourself and make yourself realize, “Okay, I’m going to pray now. I’m addressing God. I’m going to forget about everybody else and I’m just going to talk to the Lord and just be real.” That’s what makes for a good corporate prayer meeting.
