So you heard about the launch of the prayer room, but perhaps you haven’t signed up yet.  One question I hear is “Why should I pray in the prayer room when I can pray at home?  God hears me the same either way.”  True.  The location of your praying doesn’t make it more spiritual or allow God to hear you better.  So why the prayer room?  

Read on to discover three benefits of booking an hour in the prayer room:   

1. You get a full uninterrupted hour. 

I pray at home.  But if I am honest, I typically don’t get a full hour of uninterrupted time of prayer at my home.  I am pretty sure every full uninterrupted hour in private prayer I have prayed has been outside of my home.  When I pray at home, something is competing for my attention.  Whether it was neglecting to turn my phone to airplane mode, family, chores, pets, or my mind wondering, my experience is an hour in prayer at my home moves slowly because my house is full of distractions, and after a certain point I am not sure what to pray. 

In the prayer room everything around you is devoted to prayer, and there are minimal distractions.  I am guided through profound moments and a progression in prayer that keeps my heart, mind, and body engaged throughout the whole hour.  Almost every time I go, an hour feels like it is not enough time to spend with the Lord in prayer.  This is not the case for me at home. 

2. The prayer room is both private and communal. 

One wall in the prayer room has names of our loved ones who aren’t walking with Jesus.  When we spend time in the prayer room, we make praying for the church’s loved ones who don’t know Jesus a communal experience.  You are invited to write the name of your loved one on the wall, and everyone coming through will pray for them.  You also get the opportunity to pray for the loved ones of our church family.  Praying for each other’s loved ones bonds us together in Christ, and I am confident we will experience answers to these prayers. 

Next to that is a section where we can write out a note and thank God for each other, publicly encouraging each other for our gifts, servant’s heart, and sacrificial love, and praying with gratitude in our hearts for our church family.  It is beautiful to pray and read through these notes. 

As the church writes down their prayers or scriptures and we pray the prayers of those who have gone before, we get an opportunity to pray communally with the body and also by ourselves with the Lord.  The prayer room experience is both beautifully communal and personal. 

3. It will help you grow in prayer. 

Anytime you want to grow in something, it requires that you do something different than you have done before.  Whether it is a workout routine, learning an instrument, or getting better at public speaking, if you do things the way you have always done them you can maintain, but shaking up your routine helps push growth forward.  

Growing in my prayer life hasn’t happened accidentally.  It has been a series of intentional choices, of both maintaining existing habits of prayer, as well as integrating new habits.  The prayer room has guided prayer stations that will lead you into prayer in fresh ways.  They can offer ideas that you can integrate into your daily prayer life.  In short, it is a new experience that will encourage growth in your prayer life. 

Just this week I had a profound encounter with God in the prayer room.  A breakthrough that I have been praying into for a while.  Was it because of the prayer room?  No and Yes.   

I will start with NO.  Ultimately it was God’s grace being poured out on my life, and there is nothing I can do to make that happen.  God will not be bound by a formula, and it is was not about a room.  It was about the Almighty God, reaching down from heaven in a gracious way, helping my weak heart trust him and want the things of God more than I want to hold onto the stuff of self.  

But in another sense YES.  It was the content and the order of the prayers that God used to lead my heart where he wanted it.  Could he have done it without the room?  Of course.  But there is something to the divine mystery of us drawing near to God and him drawing near to us when we prioritize him in prayer.  And booking an hour with him in a secluded room, free from distraction, was how I was drawing near to God and preparing my heart to do so.  So which is it “yes” or “no”?  I don’t know.  His grace may have found me another way, but what I can say is it was the prayer room that God chose to use to be the avenue of my breakthrough this week. 

So, if by some miracle you are still reading this, I encourage you to make an appointment for an hour with the Lord in the prayer room by clicking on this link, and discover for yourself the benefits of meeting with God in our church prayer room in addition to praying at home. 

Pastor Jon