Sun. Sept. 19, 2010 (Connie Siedler)

Connie Siedler (graduate of Regent College) spoke on "The Praying Community". During her visits to PGIMF, she has observed how very important prayer is to our time of worship, and she encouraged us to continue this tradition. The stories in Acts tell how God's spirit was seen as working in the lives of a variety of new believers, first in Jerusalem, then in Samaria, and finally during Paul's journey toward Rome. Today's story (Acts 12.9-19) was another about Peter. Herod Agrippa I had killed James (brother of John) for various reasons, and when he saw how this pleased some key people, he imprisoned Peter in order to kill him. But some new believers met to pray "fervently". Even though their prayers concerning James were quite possibly not answered as they had hoped, they apparently believed that God either could be more powerful than the many guards surrounding Peter (all of whom later died unfairly) or that God could possibly change Herod's mind. The story mentions these prayers just before telling how an angel delivered Peter from prison, implying there may have been a connection. We can see in the story, and in our lives, that (whether answered as we anticipate or not) prayer can unite us as a community of faith. Eugene Peterson wrote that all prayer, spread over a life of prayer, eventually becomes praise. We have experienced this. [JEK] Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday, September 19th, 2010 using your browser's preferred media player.