Most of what I've written on this site about personal prayer has been applicable to corporate prayer, but I've assumed that we need a healthy personal prayer life before we can pray effectively with others. Yet the reverse is also true. If we're not spending time praying with other Christians, our own prayer life is likely to suffer.
Praying with other Christians, whether in twos and threes or with a larger group, has many benefits. I've already mentioned one - it helps us to be disciplined in prayer. It would be sad if the only time we prayed was when we were together with other people, but being in a group does mean that we have a commitment to pray for which we are accountable to others.
Praying with others helps to move our focus away from our own needs and onto a wider perspective. It will depend on the size and nature of the group whether that means praying for local issues or the work of God worldwide. It can be helpful to pray with groups of different sizes - a prayer triplet with a couple of close friends, and the church prayer group, for instance.
In corporate prayer, we learn more about how to pray from others. I was intending to write "younger Christians learn from more mature Christians" but the reverse is just as true. None of us knows everything there is to know about prayer. We can observe and learn much about styles of praying from those who are from a different background or temperment from ourselves. We can also learn about how others deal with problems in prayer, such as prayers that seem to go unanswered.
Praying together helps to create and preserve unity amongst people. One of Satan's purposes is to divide and destroy the church. When we pray together, agreeing on what we pray in the name of Jesus, we thwart his purposes. It may take quite an effort to find this unity. Prayer groups aren't always harmonious. But the necessity of coming to agreement on what to pray can help to overcome other differences.
We tend instinctively to ask others to pray with us when we have some urgent need - a critical illness, for instance, or an important up-coming event. Perhaps sometimes this is motivated by the (wrong) idea that God will be moved by numbers. God can hear and answer the prayer of just one person. But the unity created by many people praying in Jesus' name for the same thing is important.
When we pray together, we are able to remind each other of answered prayers. We can share our hopes and longings, our disappointments and difficulties in prayer. Other people's prayers may become the vehicle for God speaking to us about something we need to hear.
When we're struggling to pray, just being with others praying can help to keep us faithful, even if we don't add our own prayers to theirs. For those who are isolated by geography, ill health or imprisonment, knowing that others are meeting together to pray for them is a great encouragement.
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