Week of Prayer
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Second Mile holds prayer as a Core Value
We are thankful that God lets us live in conversation with him. We embrace this gift of communication by voicing our hopes, fears, successes, failures, questions, thanks, and praise. By speaking these to God, we learn to trust him above our own abilities. We are thankful that God hears us, and that we see the power of a God who moves in response to people who look to him before looking to ourselves or our culture.
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”
1 John 5:14-15
Week of Prayer
Every January, Second Mile spends a week praying and fasting as a community. We use the beginning of the year as a time to focus together, look ahead at where we are going as a church, and ask God what he would have us do.
Each day of the week, we pray about a specific area of Second Mile together. We will provide prayer booklets in the gathering and also put each day's focus here on our website. Check back here next week to find the direction for each day.
We also fast together. When people fast in the Bible, they choose to give up food to focus on prayer. They experience physical hunger and move to hungering for God. We aren't interested in forcing you to go without eating for a week, but some people will choose to give up food for a number of days in order to use the time they would normally prepare food and eat to spend time in prayer for our church and our city.
If you have never fasted from food before, you can start small and give up food for a day, or even a meal or two. You can also look at the regular things in your schedule and set aside part of your normal routine as time in prayer for the week. You can fast from coffee, Facebook, watching movies, listening to the radio in the car, your morning run, reading a novel over your lunch break, or anything else that you repeatedly do, and choose to spend that time conversing with God along with the whole of Second Mile.
We will spend all week praying together, and on the evening of Saturday, January 30, we will come together for a concert of prayer at 22nd Street Baptist Church from 6:30-8:00. This will be a time for us to join together for prayer and worship as we look forward to what God will do through Second Mile in 2010.
Prayer Guide
This prayer guide has been put together to aid our church in praying with unity and clarity. The momentum that will be created through our corporate conversations with God throughout the week will be eternally significant.
Please make every effort to spend significant time alone praying. Meet with your friends this week to pray together using this booklet as a guide. Community groups should set aside time to practice the discipline of corporate prayer.
Each day includes many Scripture references. Please use your Bible as you pray. Hebrews 4:12 says “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” When you can’t find your own words to pray, use the words of God!
This online version of the guide is the same as the print version. Use the online guide to keep up with our Week of Prayer throughout your day if you spend it in front of a computer, and use the printed booklet to write notes in and underline insights that stand out to you.
Please don’t let it intimidate you. This is a guide, but the Holy Spirit will teach you to pray if you will humble yourself and ask for his help.
Prayer in the Bible
Hebrews 4:16 “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
Psalm 28:1-2 “To you I call, O LORD my Rock; do not turn a deaf ear to me. For if you remain silent, I will be like those who have gone down to the pit. Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help, as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place.”
Psalm 141:2 “May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.”
Matthew 6:5-6 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Revelation 5:11-12 “Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang: "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!"
