Prayer Week Booklet 2011.pdf

Bethlehem’s Week of United Prayer

An Anniversary

The year 2011 marks our 140th year as a praying fellowship of God’s people. At its start I propose that we employ a written guide for our united week of prayer, a little book published just 20 years after Bethlehem had its first service in 1871.

A Guidebook

The Hidden Life of Prayer: The Life-Blood of the Christian was written by Scottish pastor David Martin McIntyre. Our own pastor commends this “little guidebook,” which he just read in this past 30th year of pastoral labors among us:

God brings books at their appointed times. The Hidden Life of Prayer arrived late but well-timed. This little jewel-strewn tapestry has done for me at 64 what Bounds’ Power Through Prayer did at 34. I could be ashamed that I need inspiration for the highest privilege. But I choose to be thankful. —John Piper

Here’s a thread from the “jewel-strewn tapestry,” a sample of the kind of blood-earnest exhorting to pray that awaits us in the coming days:

O brother, pray; in spite of Satan, pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; rather fast, and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper—and sleep too—than not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near (90).

Even the best of compositions, written 120 years ago, will occasionally look and sound to our modern, defective eyes and ears as outdated or even unintelligible. This book is no exception, being both well-written and, at times, quaintly obscure. Therefore, with apologies to those quoted, I have amended some of these better men’s vocabulary to hopefully give a more readable, understandable content.

An Invitation

One more thing: Prayer Week is a “ramping up” of corporate prayer opportunities (see “Prayer Week Schedule” at left). In addition to our regular prayer times, look over the special gatherings this week, added to entice you to enter in.
You can certainly go into your own room, shut the door, and pray in secret ...  do that by all means! And you can also open your calendar, break out of your solitude, and join your heart and voice with others to “pray in right earnest”!

David Livingston
Pastor for Shepherd Groups & Adult Ministries; Campus Pastor, South Site