Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. —Ecclesiastes 4:9, 12 NLT
I grew up in a small town and enjoyed being there until I married. So, I found it difficult at first to move away from home. My new husband and I lived nine hours and five states removed from all that was familiar to me. Ray was busy with his job in the military, working long hours and often called away for overnight assignments. I was employed as a teacher, but was finding it difficult to adjust. I was lonely. I missed my mom and dad. I missed my old friends. The first bloom of independence and finally being married was wearing off a bit by the end of the first year, and I was feeling fragile.
At just that time I met two women—and my life has never been the same since. We had found a new church and discovered that one of the men in the church was a West Point classmate of Ray’s. That led to meeting his wife, and I felt immediately drawn to her warmth and vivacity. She introduced me to a friend of hers who impressed me with her peacefulness and dedicated walk with God. We started a weekly prayer group together, and these two women were most instrumental in helping me go deeper with Christ. They introduced me to the concept of “two or three gathering to pray” and really changed my life.
Up to that point, I had not regularly prayed together with anyone. I’d attended occasional prayer meetings at church, of course, and prayed with my parents as a child, but this was different. We shared our needs and deepest hurts, and then we bowed our heads and brought them corporately before the God who cares and who waits for us to ask. Week after week, year after year, until the military scattered us, we gathered and sought God’s best for our families and for our church.
We grew closer in prayer than we ever could have through chitchat. Meeting with God, heads bowed and hearts yearning, knit us together for life. Literally. These two precious friends, who now live many states away from me, still pray for me and I for them. We can still share our deepest needs with each other and with our Lord. All three of us still walk close to Jesus to the best of our awkward abilities. The prayer times that we shared in those years created roots that went deep in knowing and loving God. And the roots still hold four decades later.
Since that time, I’ve had numerous prayer partners, each one a treasure. I’ve prayed many long years with Moms in Prayer women and experienced that same closeness that shared prayer produces. When we pray together, we grow in friendship and trust—and we mature in the faith.
- We focus more clearly. We are less distracted when others with us are concentrating on the same concern, bringing a deep need to the God who is able to help.
- We reaffirm our position in regard to Christ. We acknowledge corporately that we are helpless and need Someone bigger to rescue and aid us in our distresses and dilemmas.
- We fight against the enemy in Christ’s power. His strength comes when two or three of us, back to back as our Ecclesiastes verse describes, cry out for victory, asking for the defeat of the enemy who seeks to harm us and our loved ones.
- We grow in trust. We trust each other with our secrets, and we grow more and more in our trust that God hears and answers prayer.
- We see the mighty hand of God at work. We witness together answers to our prayers, and over the years, they pepper our lives. Each victory grows our hope and our determination to continue praying for hard things and waiting in faith believing that God is able to deliver in every new situation.
A poignant moment in the book of Acts has always gripped me. Paul had made a stop in Tyre on his way to Jerusalem, where it had been prophesied that he would be taken prisoner. Among the Christians had descended a foreboding that they most likely would never see Paul again before Heaven. So, what do they do? Luke, who was accompanying Paul, describes it like this, “When we returned to the ship at the end of the week, the entire congregation, including women and children, left the city and came down to the shore with us. There we knelt, prayed, and said our farewells.” (Acts 21:5-6a NLT, emphasis mine).
This is what Christians do. We come together and pray. When times are good and when times are bad. We kneel, either literally or figuratively, before our God together and lift each other up in prayer and trust. The bond formed in times like these is like no other. How I thank God for that little prayer group made up of three newly-married, young women that started a journey of knowing God that continues to this day. He has sustained and strengthened all three friends through countless trials and joys, and we still declare that our God is God and He is good!
Father, thank You for the great gift of Christian fellowship. Thank You for friends willing to bow their heads and enter into intercession with me for my needs and theirs. Oh, Lord, the bond You grow between us and with us is indescribably rich. How You bless us as we come to You in prayer. I am deeply grateful. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
You are loved,
Sharon
Sweet Selah Ministries
Vision
To inspire a movement away from the belief that “busy is better”
and toward the truth of God’s Word that stillness and knowing
Him matter most—and will be reflected in more effective work and service
Mission
To offer biblical resources and retreats that help women pause (Selah)
and love God more deeply as they know Him more intimately (Sweet)
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We all need those “specials” in our life.
We do, indeed. God wired us for community and family!!