For every Christian, prayer is an important part of living a life of faith. Through prayer we get to know God better, confess our sins and bring our requests to Him. As it says in Psalm 17 verse 6 “I call on you, my God, for you will answer me; turn your ear to me and hear my prayer.”
At MTS being intentional about prayer is important. Although the team at MTS are a work team, we are brothers and sisters in Christ first, and we rely on the grace of our God for the work that we do. Everything we do needs to be committed to Him. To this end, we prioritise prayer both formally and informally in our MTS team.
Weekly prayer time
Every Monday morning between 9:30-10:30am the MTS gathers for prayer. We enjoy a short devotional. Then we pray together. A different staff member leads the devotional each week. Last week Glenda walked us slowly through the story of Zaccheus (Luke:1-10). After that everyone takes turns in praying for each other.
We each share:1 weekend highlight, 1 life prayer point and 1 MTS prayer point is used. This helps to focus our team on bringing all things to God, but also sharing the realities, both up and down, of our lives as Christian’s with each other.
Incorporating spontaneous prayer
In addition to our planned prayer time on Mondays, the team also tries to build a culture of spontaneous prayer. In fact one of our staff team “behaviours we expect from one another” is: “We bring everything to God in prayer (in meetings and informally)”. When we meet together we make a point to pray, when things arise personally or professionally that are a challenge, we pause to pray. When we plan for the future of MTS, we pray.
Prayer filled Meetings
We start all meetings with prayer; asking God for wisdom from above. We often pray in the middle of meetings too e.g. the MTS Board Meeting at the end of the National Director’s Report. We pray in volunteer team meetings e.g. MTS Recruit Katoomba Committee. We pray in our fortnightly MTS Staff Meetings.
Planning for prayer
MTS also produces a monthly prayer calendar to help other Christians intentionally pray. Our calendars can be accessed from our website or you can subscribe to receive a daily prayer point on PrayerMate.
Planning prayer through prayer calendars and structured prayer throughout the week helps to ensure you are praying both regularly and broadly.
In the month of May we also run the #MTSPrayinMay campaign. This month-long focus on praying for MTS reminds us as a team, as well as all our trainers, apprentices, partners and Christians everywhere to commit to praying for the mission of MTS. Only through God can we raise up and train workers for his harvest! (Matthew 9:38).
We at MTS are thoroughly convinced that prayer works (1 Samuel 1:19-20, James 5:16) and therefore we pray.