As contemporary Christians prayer can be intimidating and even seen as something that ‘super’ Christians do. Prayer can be something we question whether we really need to do, maybe it is for weak people. Prayer seems unnecessary especially in our busy lives. Prayer is something that many of us are just not comfortable doing. Yet, as we read through the pages of Scripture we see time and time again the place of prayer in the lives of God’s people. Prayer marks relationship, it moves God, it leads to empowerment and it leads to lives being changed. Quite frankly Scripture does not wrestle with ‘should’ Christians pray, but ‘how’ should Christians pray?
One of the chief results of the Protestant Reformation was putting God’s word back into the hands of the people, rather than just the clergy. Ironically, it may have been this fact that has led to a majority of evangelical Christians to cease reading scripture; after all, familiarity breeds contempt. If the church is to recover a sense of vocation and purpose, it must recover an ability to read scripture. More specifically, if Northview Community Church is to be successful in engaging it’s community with the mission of God, it must take the word of God into hand in order to be shaped as God’s people.