Rhythms

It probably won't come as much of a surprise to many of you to know what I'm not very organised, I'm not very structured; pretty happy-go-lucky in how I arrange my life. Flexible, I believe, is the word for it.

That means I’m not much of a lists person when I pray, I tend to be a bit hit and miss depending on how I feel at any given moment. I tend towards praying where my heart is, rather than praying the things that ‘need’ it, or just to be diligent. So the idea of a rhythm and a structure to our prayer life together has been a bit of a job to get my head around.

The idea of a ‘rhythm’ of prayer seems a bit boring, a bit dry. I’m a raving charismatic at heart, and the mention of contemplative practices tends to bring me out in hives. However, I’m also an activist and a doer, so the idea of having absolutely nothing in my diary, no structure, no doing at all is equally frightening.

It’s a bit daunting to start from scratch in knowing how to fill your time – not too full, creating space for God-incidences and opportunities. We came together as a corps to plot and plan what it could look like to spend a year in rest and prayer.

In place of the programme we left behind, we developed a weekly rhythm of prayer that looks like this:

Monday       Sabbath, everything is shut, we encourage everyone who can to rest (obviously some people have to work)

Tuesday to Thursday:

10 – 10:30     Gathered Prayer

10:30 – 12     SoulSpace

12 – 1           Shared lunch

I love that in Scripture the week starts with rest. The day starts with night time, with rest. We don’t rest because we’ve burnt out and we feel like we need it. We rest because it’s a healthy place to start relationship with God and everything he calls us to.

Rhythm holds us together, it keeps us praying, even when the energy and the inspiration isn’t there. It’s a drum beat that keeps us in time as we march on to war, praying, fighting.

Every day we pray the same prayer, which we wrote together as a corps, based on our 6 values: prayer, creativity, learning, hospitality, mercy, mission.

Lord God, help us to be a prayerful community, faithful to the rhythm of prayer you’ve called us to, listening and persevering in prayer until you answer.  Would you raise up your Salvation Army in prayer as we approach our 150^th anniversary.

Lord God, help us to be a creative community, echoing your creativity in how we express our love for you, in solving problems, and in reaching out to others. May our life together be full of fun and deep relationships. Give us the wow factor as we dare to be different.

Lord God, help us to be a learning community, moving closer to you, going deeper with you.  Through this Sabbath Year teach us forgiveness, freedom, hope, humility and love.  Thank you that we can learn from each other; empower us with strength and tools to keep moving forward together.

Lord God, help us to be a hospitable community, always opening the door to you when you knock in the form of pilgrim and stranger, foreigner and friend.  Bring unity in your Church, growth through healthy conflict, and may our fellowship multiply beyond all we can ask or imagine in gifts, blessings and people of all generations and cultures.  Help us to reach the next generations, and bless our building to suit the mission you’ve called us to. 

Lord God, help us to be a merciful community, loving like you love, and responding in practical ways to the suffering around us.  We pray for your shalom-peace around the world, starting in our hearts, our families, our community, and our nation.  Let your mercy comfort our comrades who are persecuted for their faith in you, Jesus.

Lord God, help us to be a missional community, encountering your love so much that it overflows to the people we interact with. Give us courage to speak the name of Jesus when we are nervous or afraid, and help us each effectively communicate Christ’s invitation to repent and believe the good news.  Lord give us the lost.

We come to you, Jesus, to find rest for our souls; we come to you, Holy Spirit, to fill, anoint and empower every moment of this day; we come to you, Father, to learn how to Sabbath. Reveal who you are through your Name today, and let your kingdom come and your will be done in our fellowship, in this community, and in The Salvation Army. Amen.

Every week we pray through a rota of topics (for inspiration when we get stuck) – Tuesdays: Government and Emergency Services, Wednesdays: Young People and Schools, Thursdays: The Salvation Army, Fridays: Healing, Hospitals and Health Care, Saturdays: Poverty, Injustice and Homelessness. We pray through the Territorial Prayer Diaries, every day, and each day pray a different name of God, asking him to teach us his nature, heart and character as we sit with him and Sabbath.

It doesn’t come easily, but actually, I’m really enjoying it. We’ve been discovering beautiful richness in praying through things regularly. Sometimes I skim over the words and my mouth says them before my brain engages. Other times I discover a hidden depth that I’d never seen before in those same old words.

Because I don’t naturally structure my own prayer life, I LOVE knowing that there’s a half hour slot at the beginning of every day where I meet together with my people and we pour our passion and our hearts into the needs of our community, our town, our nation, the Army and the world. It’s doing me a lot of good.