Why have my last couple of posts been about our ineffectiveness of prayer and confession in our spiritual lives? Well, I’m a little frustrated by what I call our “stale prayer lists.” Isn’t something wrong if our prayer list remains relatively the same over time? Doesn’t this imply that God is not answering most of these prayers?
Some churches publish a prayer list in their weekly bulletin. Unfortunately, in many situations, these lists change very little from week to week, except that they become longer. We would hope that this would like a revolving door–older prayers would be answered as new prayer requests are added. Instead, the lists just grow, and the font becomes smaller so that they can be contained on a single page. Then, I ask myself, how many people in the congregation are actually reading the requests in this small font, and actually praying through the names and situations listed there?
I’m not sure what’s wrong, but I believe that stale prayer lists are a sign of stale Christianity.