Prayer

We want you to connect to our church but this not as important as having a personal connection to God. We do this in a variety of ways, but most often we do this through prayer. Usually we think of prayer as our reaching out to God. A lot of these prayers are calls for “Help.” We make requests of God and hope that God is listening, and taking what we ask seriously. Sometimes we just need to ask God for faith and how to trust that He is real and cares about us.

But a real conversation, or relationship, takes two-way communication. Learning to listen to God is part of prayer too. We need to give God space to speak to us, offer us guidance, and bring us the peace that is missing in the chaos of our lives.

At the Vineyard, we take learning to pray seriously. Yes, we pray at our meals, but how about praying for the person at work who has a headache? How about asking God for guidance on how to handle an issue with a friend? What about helping our children learn to pray for their teachers? What do these kind of prayers look like? Do they have to be formal or loud or using just the right words? These are the kind of questions we explore in our church. Why? Because knowing God and having a relationship with God is a priority for us.

We have classes on prayer to help all of get better at this. We also practice simple prayers in all our small groups. And we like to pray with and for each other whenever we gather. Experiencing prayer from others is a great way to grow in prayer ourselves.

The 7 most important words we learn at the Vineyard are: “Can I pray for you right now?” Most of us will say yes because we know we need something that only God can give. When we see someone hurting or in need, we too can ask those simple 7 words. Then we get to bring a little bit of the God experience in someone else’s life too.