My question is not “What are they praying for? Do they know what they’re praying for?” My question is “Do they have to know what they’re praying for?” My question for you is, when it comes to a purpose and motivation for prayer, “Do you have to know what you’re praying for?”

Today, Pentecost Sunday, our congregation gathered for the first time since the lockdown began. We implemented precautions and social distancing. Once again, it is good to be in the house of God among the people of God. Nothing else compares.

Prayer
a building block of renewal

The following is a brief snippet of the sermon.

For the sermon notes CLICK HERE

Purpose of prayer

They thought differently about prayer, but why? “What are they praying for?” I know that there can be different opinions on this point.

Some scholars believe that the New Testament Church knows what they’re praying for in Acts 1.

Others believe that the NT Church does not know what they’re expecting. All they know is just a few things Jesus has said about the Holy Spirit.

There seems to be this debate out there about the question, “Do they know what they’re praying for?”

If I was going to add a question to that debate, it would be, aren’t we getting the cart before the horse? My question would be a little bit different than “Do they know what they’re praying for?”

We already have the whole book of Acts written out for us. All we have to do is turn the page to Acts chapter 2, but they’re still stuck in Acts chapter 1, verse 14.

Do we as a people have to put it on a whiteboard and say, “This is what we’re praying for”? Do we have to know, or can we just start praying?

It’s a little tweak on the question. Do we have to know what we’re praying for before we start praying?