Here are five great reasons to pray with others:
1. FOCUS
Praying with others helps you focus. Alone, thoughts of the grocery list crowd in, and that phone call you have to make to the pediatrician disrupts your praying. When someone else is listening, you don’t have to sound profound, but at least you speak words on the subject — and that very concentration pushes the grocery list out of your mind.
2. PRESENCE
The presence of others praying with you on a tough issue is enormously comforting. You are not alone. Your fellow prayer warriors care enough to carry your burdens with you and that lightens your load.
3. INSIGHT
No one has all the answers. Or insights. Or questions. To pray with another is to hear her heart on an issue, and you discover new ways of viewing hard situations. You will marvel at the way God speaks directly to your situation through that other mom who may not even know you or your circumstances. It’s miraculous. Someone else’s prayers actually fuel and direct your own.
4. OBEDIENCE
The Bible urges people to pray together in community, and the early believers did this all the time. It’s what God wants. He knows we need each other. That’s why we are called the body of Christ. Each part is important to the whole.
5. COMMUNITY
Praying with others builds a bond that goes soul deep. You can chat about inconsequential things for years with women and never be close to them. You can pray with other women one time, opening your heart in trust with them before God, and you are knit together like sisters. Close. Confiding. Richer for the union through prayer and committed to each other in a special way.
Want to link arms with women in your neighborhood to pray with passion and purpose for your children — and their schools and teachers and learning styles? Go to our Group Locator and check out a group near you. It’s time to build a prayer community in your life.
by Sharon Gamble
