Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God

Philippians 4: 6 ESV


Welcome to our March 2011 First Friday Call to Prayer. Our aim is to provide you with teaching that we trust will enhance your prayer experience and will be an encouragement to you. We will also provide you with praise items and prayer requests coming from within ANiC and the Anglican Communion worldwide.

We encourage you to set aside the first Friday, March 4th, as a day of prayer and fasting for the Church in these critical days, ideally gathering with other believers in your parish or region for corporate prayer at some point in the day.

Prayer Quotes
God does not delay to hear our prayers because He has no mind to give; but that, by enlarging our desires, He may give us the more largely.
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury 1093 -1109.


“SO TELL ME AGAIN WHY PRAYER IS SO IMPORTANT??”

Dear Friends;

The Lord has been stirring my heart, once again, to exhort us within the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) to not give in to battle weariness or complacency with regard to prayer. During the height of the orthodoxy crisis within the Anglican Church of Canada that led to the birth of Anglican Essentials Canada and ultimately to the launch of ANiC, many of us spent countless hours on our knees (both literally and figuratively), crying out in desperation for God’s mercy and direction. We were mobilized to pray in an unprecedented way. And we saw answers to prayer that were both remarkable and frequent. Many of our parishes grew in their experience of corporate intercession, and the biblical mandate to pray became a high priority for all of us.

The present danger, as I see it, is that for many of us the battles of diocesan litigation and other distracting entanglements are drawing to an end. We are moving into a more normal church lifestyle that is both a relief and a concern, lest we slip back into old ways and old patterns. The challenges before us are no less daunting than they were in 2002 when the valiant few BC parishes walked out of their diocesan synod over the blessing of same sex relationships. Yes, no less daunting, but different in scope. Just ask your bishop whether he believes that there is any less urgency for prayer now than there was during our earlier struggles! The enemy of our souls has a more subtle agenda than during those days, but he is equally as bent on our destruction; he stills comes only “to steal, kill and destroy” (John 10: 10)

In March 2006, exactly five years ago, we published the following article under the same title to encourage ongoing prayer in our personal and corporate lives at the height of the crisis. I believe the message is as pertinent today as it was in 2006, and, indeed, as it was when it was written.

Here are some passages from the pen of E.M Bounds, a great hero of prayer from the 19th century. A law student, preacher, pastor, prisoner of war during the American Civil War, Bounds was a powerful writer and spent the last seventeen years of his life in Georgia, reading, writing and praying. He rose at 4 AM daily for many years, and took the command to pray without ceasing very seriously. Here is a man who truly “walked the walk” and that gives his writing both credibility and authenticity.

GVH


E.M. Bounds on prayer

What is God’s will about prayer? First of all, it is God’s will that we pray. “Jesus Christ spake a parable unto them to this end, that all men ought always to pray, and not to faint.”

Paul writes to young Timothy about the first things which God’s people are to do, and first among the first he puts prayer: “I exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men” (I Tim 2: 1 KJV).

Note how frequently prayer is brought forward in the New Testament: “Continuing instant in prayer”; “Pray without ceasing”; “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving”; “Be ye sober and watch unto prayer”; Christ’s clarion call was “watch and pray”. What are all these and others, if it is not the will of God that men should pray?

But how do I know that I am praying the will of God? Every true attempt to pray is in response to the will of God. Bungling it may be and untutored by human teachers, but it is acceptable to God, because it is in obedience to his will. If I will give myself up to the inspiration of the Spirit of God, who commands me to pray, the details and the petitions of that praying will fall into harmony with the will of him who wills that I should pray.

Prayer is no little thing, no selfish and small matter. It does not concern the petty interests of one person. The littlest prayer broadens out by the will of God till it touches all words, conserves all interests, and enhances man’s greatest wealth, and God’s greatest good. God is so concerned that we pray that he has promised to answer prayer. He has not promised to do something general if we pray, but he has promised to do the very thing for which we have prayed.

Non-praying is lawlessness, discord, anarchy. Prayer, in the moral government of God, is as strong and far-reaching as the law of gravitation in the material world, and it is as necessary as gravitation to hold things in their proper sphere and in life.

One of the great purposes of God in his holy book is to impress on us indelibly the great importance, the priceless value, and the absolute necessity of asking God for the things which we need for time and eternity. He urges us by every consideration, and presses and warns us by every interest. He points us to his own son, turned over to us for our good, as his pledge that prayer will be answered, teaching us that God is our Father, able to do all things for us and to give all things to us, much more than earthly parents are able or willing to do for their children.

Let us thoroughly understand ourselves and understand, also, this great business of prayer. Our one great business is prayer and we will never do it well unless we fasten it by all binding force. We will never do it well without arranging the best conditions of doing it well. Satan has suffered so much by good praying that all his wily, shrewd, and ensnaring devices will be used to cripple its performance.

Prayer is a privilege, a sacred, princely privilege. Prayer is a duty, an obligation most binding, and most imperative, which should hold us to it. Prayer is the appointed condition of getting God’s aid. This aid is as manifold and illimitable as God’s ability, and as varied and exhaustless is this aid as man’s need. Prayer is the channel through which all good flows from God to man, and all good from men to men. God is the Christian’s father. Asking and giving are in that relation.

Prayer is not a picture to handle, to admire, to look at. It is not beauty, colouring, shape, attitude, imagination or genius. These things do not pertain to its character or conduct. It is not poetry nor music. Its inspiration and melody come from heaven. Prayer belongs to the spirit, and at times it possesses the spirit and stirs the spirit with high and holy purposes and resolves.

Excerpted from The Reality of Prayer, by E.M. Bounds, chapter “Prayer - A Privilege, Princely, Sacred”

Garth V. Hunt


Praise God …
For the privilege of conversing with our Heavenly Father anytime, anywhere.

For the shed blood of Jesus that washes away our sins and covers us in His righteousness.

That our Abba Father delights in us, in communicating with us, and in responding to our prayers.

For His Word, the Holy Bible, from which we learn about Him and His working in human history.

For the privilege of engaging in spiritual battle through prayer.

For the reformation God is working out in global Anglicanism – and the entire Christian Church. In the midst of chaos, He is building His Kingdom and refining His bride, the Church.

For His blessing on ANiC, for how He has led, and for the future He has planned for us in 2011.

For our churches, for ANiC, and for the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

For the many ANiC “projects” and church plants – the small, but growing congregations of faithful Anglicans – that He is adding to our number.