Corporate prayer is needful for any Assembly. When spending time together in prayer it is always a good use of time, even if waiting on God and with very little said. Yet believers all across the world—in the busyness of modern society—have decided not to spend time in prayer meetings, for the work of the local Church. This sad choice has kept many Church meetings prayerless and ineffective. Many pastors spend less than 5 minutes a day in prayer: “And it will be: Like people, like priests.” So the private prayer walks of many is lacking. Few are praying. Few are spending time in intimacy with the Lord Jesus. Few are prevailing with God.
Prayer meetings are a tremendous place where God births life in a local area. To gather with 2-3 other believers and spend time seeking the Lord in prayer allows for a testimony to be established for the Lord’s Name. A simple practical encouragement is for believers to spend a few minutes quieting themselves before praying.
They should then enter into a time of thanksgiving towards the Lord for His character, goodness and for the mighty works done in His Name. Then they should lead into a time of intercession—with thanksgiving—guided by a servant leader who will highlight various prayer requests to the body. He should present such requests individually allowing brothers and sisters to pray into one request until there is a sense of breakthrough and fulfillment of the burden from the Lord for that topic. This prevailing prayer is necessary and what a blessing it is to sense the prayer already answered from the Lord. There can be a sense of cry and burden that can be expressed in prayer with fervency.
At other times prayers might be more intimate and soft spoken before the Lord. This is all according to the leading of the Spirit of God and there is no system or pattern for praying except as given by way of examples in the Holy Scriptures.
In the underground house Church in China when new converts come to the Lord they literally are locked away with others—out of their own free will—for 2-3 days to learn the basics of Christian life and to learn how to pray. Such praying is done on their knees for many hours before the Lord and God listens! “When desperate prayer outweighs stale religious observance, God listens.”