Becoming a Praying Church (2)

In his book, Reversed Thunder, Eugene Peterson wrote:“While conflicts raged between good and evil, prayers went up from devout bands of first century Christians all over the Roman empire. Massive engines of persecution and scorn were ranged against them. They had neither weapons nor votes. They had little money and no prestige. Why didn’t they have mental breakdowns? Why didn’t they cut and run? They prayed.“It was in order to hear those prayers that there was silence in heaven [Rev. 8:1-3]. He mixed the prayers of the Christians with incense (which cleansed them from impurities) and combined them with fire (God’s Spirit) from the altar. Then he put it all in the censor and threw it over heaven’s ramparts. The censor, plummeting through the air, landed on earth. On impact there were ‘peals of thunder, voices, flashes of lighting, and an earthquake’ (Rev. 8:5). The prayers which had ascended, unremarked by the journalists of the day, returned with immense force—in George’s Herbert’s phrase, as ‘reversed thunder.’ Prayer reenters history with incalculable effects. Our earth is shaken daily by it.”Oh that we would see clearly the power unleashed through prayer in the world. May we become a praying church crying out, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.Join us as we continue our series: A Royal Priesthood – A Holy People: Becoming a Praying Church.