Dear Friends,
Take time to pray for your neighbor, that you may surround them in God's love.
This is the second of our Anchor Statements, those things that anchor us to the life we believe Jesus is calling us to.
Notice how each Anchor statement is phrased, what we shall do for our neighbor, and the expected result. What frustrated me about so many Core Value statements is that they just list the word, in this case Prayer, with a short reason why, in the abstract, it is important.
For our church, to achieve the vision of our Ships, the application of prayer, as an anchor, is very specific. Pray for your neighbor, to surround them with God's love.
Prayer is our communication with God, but not simply the sharing of information. Prayer is joyful celebration, prayer is painful lamentation, prayer is coming in the heights of our wonder to thank God, prayer is coming in the depths of our despair when there does not appear to be anything else to do.
Prayer is not between equals. Prayer is what we offer to the One who created the heavens and the earth, who has the power to do ANYTHING. Scripture says that God is love (1 John 4:8). To surround our neighbor with God's love is to surround them with God. And this is all done by prayer.
Prayer is the foundation for all our work in Jesus. Surrounding our neighbor with God's love is not simply a means of protecting them. Asking for that love means asking for God's movement in their hearts to accept the time and the service we offer, to hear the message that we offer, to come into this community of faith that we rejoice in.
To proceed without prayer is quite simply to proceed without the presence of the Living God. To do that and dare to call ourselves God's church assumes that we do not desire God's care or God's guidance in what we do. Then we shall surely fail. Without prayer, we shall surely fail.
But with prayer, God's leading will never fail. I am your servant,
In Christ,
Rev. Peter Hofstra
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