Prayer was the very life breath of early Christians, and it needs to be our life breath as well. What would happen if we really took prayer seriously? What would happen if we prayed daily for each other by name? What would happen if we prayed for the ministry of our churches every day, seeking to know God’s will for our lives and for our churches?
The late Henri Nouwen once wrote:
Prayer is the language of the Christian community, and praying is not one of the many things the community does. Rather, it is its very being. Many discussions about prayer do not take this very seriously. Sometimes it seems the Christian community is so busy with its projects and plans that there is neither the time nor the mood to pray. But when prayer is no longer its primary concern, and when its many activities are no longer seen and experiences as part of prayer itself, the community quickly degenerates into a club with a common cause but no common vocation.
I think i know what would happen if we took prayer seriously. We would be transformed. Our lives would be empowered for service. Our churches would be renewed from the inside out, and we would gain a clear understanding of who we are, whose we are, and what it is that we should be about. And when we seek God’s will in prayer, great things will happen in our lives together, and in our ministries as the church.
A Far Country 
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