Prayer

The Prayer Room at 107 N. Driver St.*

            Jesus was teaching and saying, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'?"  - Mark 11:17

At Carr United Methodist Church, we are seeking to make prayer a primary focus. Lately, we have been meeting for prayer on Tuesday evenings at 7 p.m. at 3005 Pleasant Green Road, and you are welcome to join us. The following is an excerpt about prayer from one of Rev. Cheryl's sermons:

"Although the church building gets used for many things, God’s house is to be called a house of prayer, not a house of programs, or a house of good preaching, or a house of entertainment, or congregational dinners, or a house of fellowship, or a house of meetings, or a house of fundraisers.  The church is to be a house of prayer! Prayer is God’s gift to us, prayer is God’s chosen means for bringing about God’s own will and of providing for our needs.  The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective, the book of James tells us.  

"Sometimes we treat prayer as a means to get what we want, as if God were a heavenly Santa Claus and the church a marketplace.  The purpose of prayer is not to get what we want. The purpose of prayer is to bring about God’s will; it is God’s chosen means to bring about God’s will. We are needy people, we want God to help us with our needs, and that’s okay, but when we get our purpose as individuals and as Carr Church aligned with God’s will, we find that our needs get met.  When we align ourselves with God’s will through prayer, all kinds of marvelous things happen. When we align ourselves with God’s will through prayer, God will provide for our needs as a church, God will energize us, God will guide us, and bless us, and heal us, and enable us to do mighty things for God.  I wonder – do we want to do mighty things for God?

"When our lives seem mediocre at best and empty at worst, Jesus calls to us from the temple, 'Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink!'   When Jesus barged from his tomb on Easter, when he smashed the walls of sin, overturned the tables of death, when the veil in the temple was ripped in half, you and I were given the gift of full access to God’s throne of grace through prayer! Christ speaks to us: 'My house is to be called a house of prayer!'  Let us pray."

If you have a prayer concern you would like us to pray about, please e-mail: carrumc@nccumc.org

*The Mildred B. Wilkinson Prayer Room, given in her memory by her husband, James B. "Whitey" Wilkinson, and dedicated on July 24, 2005.