Let's spend Fridays over the next weeks talking about FELLOWSHIP. We'll call it FRIDAY FAMILY FELLOWSHIP. I'll share ideas for fellowship that will be encouraging to your relationship with your immediate family, extended family, and church family..
I hope that you pray daily with your children. That is one of my regrets. As our children got older, praying together did not always happen. Yet, some of my most treasured memories are praying with the kids over lost glasses/toys...asking God's forgiveness after a quarrel...for friends who were struggling...for future mates...when the kids and I got lost because I was talking while driving (right Vanessa?)...together over the years as we've dealt with terrible health and wellness issues...
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How long is the longest you have prayed? Can you make if for an hour? In about a month, the Pitman church will host our annual 24 hours of prayer. Different groups of us will gather to pray each an hour at a time over a 24 hour period. Why wait? We're praying daily and fervently for our world, our nation, our community, our family, and ourselves. Join with someone in your fellowship this week and commit to praying one hour together: two, three, four, or more of you. We have prayer groups of men doing this throughout the week. How about it sisters? It could be over the phone...it could be at your computer typing your prayers and sharing them with a sister via email. It could be on your knees with your husband. Make your life sweet - PRAY!
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The words of the song, SWEET HOUR OF PRAYER, first appeared in The New York Observer, September 13, 1845. It was submitted with these words written by Thomas Salmon:
- "During my residence at Coleshill, Warwickshire, England, I became acquainted with W. W. Walford, the blind preacher, a man of obscure birth and connections and no education, but of strong mind and most retentive memory. In the pulpit he never failed to select a lesson well adapted to his subject, giving chapter and verse with unerring precision and scarcely ever misplacing a word in his repetition of the Psalms, every part of the New Testament, the prophecies, and some of the histories, so as to have the reputation of knowing the whole Bible by heart.
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- W.W. Walford actually sat in the chimney corner, employing his mind in composing a sermon or two for Sabbath delivery, and his hands in cutting, shaping and polishing bones for shoe horns and other little useful implements. At intervals he attempted poetry. .
- On one occasion, paying him a visit, he repeated two or three pieces which he had composed, and having no friend at home to commit them to paper, he had laid them up in the storehouse within. "How will this do?" asked he, as he repeated the following lines, with a complacent smile touched with some light lines of fear lest he subject himself to criticism. I rapidly copied the lines with my pencil, as he uttered them, and sent them for insertion in the Observer, if you should think them worthy of preservation."End of Quote
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Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
That calls me from a world of care,
And bids me at my Father's throne
Make all my wants and wishes known.
In seasons of distress and grief,
My soul has often found relief
And oft escaped the tempter's snare
By thy return, sweet hour of prayer!
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Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
The joys I feel, the bliss I share,
Of those whose anxious spirits burn
With strong desires for thy return!
With such I hasten to the place
Where God my Savior shows His face,
And gladly take my station there,
And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!
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Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
Thy wings shall my petition bear
To Him whose truth and faithfulness
Engage the waiting soul to bless.
And since He bids me seek His face,
Believe His Word and trust His grace,
I'll cast on Him my every care,
And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!
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Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
May I thy consolation share,
Till, from Mount Pisgah's lofty height,
I view my home and take my flight:
This robe of flesh I'll drop and rise
To seize the everlasting prize;
And shout, while passing through the air,
Farewell, farewell, sweet hour of prayer!
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Words by William Walford, 1845
Music by William B. Bradbury, 1861
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1 comment:
Hi Patti,
I just read several days of our blog. It is such a wonderful blessing to read the different days. You...are a woman who definitely has her priorities where they need to be. Sharing Jesus, not just to those of us who know him but to those who might get to know him through your writings. You are and continue to be a blessing to me.
Love,
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