Last week I wrote about God’s expectation that we pray together.  Today I want to address some of our excuses.  Some I have heard from others.  Others I found in Daniel Henderson’s book Fresh Encounters – to which I am indebted to for helping me think through corporate prayer more clearly (see my brief review of the book here).  So here are seven excuses we use to avoid praying together.

1. We are only supposed to pray privately.  This excuse stems from a misunderstanding of Matthew 6:5-6 which says:

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

The misunderstanding is that Jesus only wants us to pray privately in our room (or KJV: our closet).  But the issue Jesus is addressing is not so much where we pray as our motive for prayer.  Are we praying to be seen by others (to impress them with our godliness) or are we praying to be heard by God.  And there is a world of difference between giving a “prayer show” out in public and meeting together with other believers to pray together in a room. 

And by the way, we are talking about a room, not a modern closet.  When the KJV was translated, a closet was not a place to store your clothes, but a room.  We can see this from old castles that have large rooms called the King’s Closet (see picture below from Windsor Castle).  A KJV closet had plenty of space for many believers to gather for prayer.

Finally, that Jesus leaves ample room for us to meet not only alone in a room, but also with other believers is clear from the fact that Jesus goes on to teach the disciples a pattern for corporate prayer in v9-13 (see last post). 

2. Praying privately is just as good as praying together.  In other words, the excuse is that we can just stay home and pray on our own instead of gathering together to pray.  Certainly there is some truth here.  We can and should pray privately.  But that doesn’t excuse us from praying together.  The two are not the same.  For instance in Matthew 18:18-20, Jesus speaks of two or three gathering in his name, and he is there in their midst.  Of course he is present everywhere, so the implication seems to be that he is present in some different way than when we pray alone.  Praying together is simply different than praying alone, and we cannot neglect either one.

3. Praying together is boring.  Many people find a few people leading in long prayers with long lists of requests to be rather boring.  But praying together shouldn’t be boring.  Communion with God shouldn’t be boring.  The problem may be our approach rather than the act.  What if we infused Scripture and praise into our times of prayer?  What if we prayed shorter prayers so more people could lead?  The problem is not praying together, but how we do it.  That said, the problem may also be in our hearts.  Do we come with anticipation of spending time together before the Lord?  Or do we come with bad attitudes.  Even an amusement park can be boring if we go with a bad attitude.

4. Praying together is just a gossip session.  Certainly a request-driven prayer meeting can devolve into this.  But we can (and should) guard against it.  Keeping the “share” time short and the prayer time long can help.  Being careful to only pray for things which are public knowledge or that we have permission to share will also help.  At any rate, rejecting corporate prayer because there is the danger of gossip, is like proverbially throwing out the baby with the bath water.

5. No one else is doing it.  This excuse is self-perpetuating.  I don’t because you don’t, and you don’t because I don’t.  But parents would never allow this excuse to stand from their children (none of my friends go to church, none of my friends are waiting for marriage, none….).  As I have heard often – if you were friends were jumping off a cliff would you follow?  And if we are not praying together, we are in fact jumping off a spiritual cliff.

6. I’m too busy.  Really?  Too busy to spend time with other believers communing with God?  In that case there needs to be a serious rearrangement of priorities.

7. I’m afraid to pray out loud.  This is a real fear for many.  But the fact is, you shouldn’t have to pray out loud.  If you don’t want to lead out loud in prayer, just come and pray along agreeing with those who are leading.  Another way to address this is to move to shorter – one or two sentence – prayers.  While long ten minute prayers may be very intimidating, shorter prayers are much more manageable.  When you feel ready, try a short prayer.  Before you know it, you will be praying out loud regularly.

In the end, all of these are excuses.  The bottom line is that God expects us to pray together.  So let’s deal with our excuses, and commit to pray regularly together.  Who knows what God might do!