Prayer Requests

I can often tell when somebody's praying for me. It always starts me on the path of putting things right. I feel carried along. It's easier to make the right choices. It's suddenly easier to stand before God and make requests of Him myself. Those prayers are like a loan of faith to prime my pump with. Why does the church begrudge me that prayer? Paul's prayers were primarily for spiritual needs; when the church asks for prayer requests, why is it uncomfortable when they aren't physical? We act as though the physical world is the real world. At prayer meeting on Wednesday night, you can listen to the people speak for themselves, instead of just believing what the pastor says about them. How commited to God are Americans? It depends whom you ask. Two recent surveys by the Barna Group reveal a gap between the perception of pastors and the reality of their congregants' devotion to God. The average Protestant church leader believes that 70 percent of those in his or her church consider faith in God to be their top priority in life. Yet only 23 percent of Protestant church attenders claim their faith as first priority. The discrepancy may lie in different ways of measuring devotion to God. The pastors interviewed tended to assess devotion based on outward factors such as church attendance or participation in church-related ministries and activities.