The lack of a sense of reverence and awe in our churches and our lives has been weighing heavily on me in recent days. I touched on this briefly in my last post (see “A Devoted Life”). There is something else troubling me about the way we “do” church in our modern culture. Believers today rarely see prayer as being a sacred approach to the throne of God.
Almost every church I have attended in the past thirty-five years uses prayer as a transition vehicle from one part of the service to the next. It’s the time when the worship team ascends or exits the platform or simply signals the end of the greeting and the beginning of the service. Prayer has become a vehicle instead of being understood as the great privilege and gift that it is. Even in our church gatherings, it appears nothing is sacred.