What do you believe about prayer? At the beginning of 2012, designated
a year of prayer for the UK, this question - and our response to it - is key.
As headlines scream dire warnings - 'CBI slash UK growth forecast', 'Profits drop for first time', 'Banks drag FTSE down', 'Jobs not cuts' - how should Christians respond? In particular, how should Christians concerned for today's workplace respond? Here, surely, is a moment when people in our organisations and workplaces are in need of prayer and the intervention of our God who answers prayer. And yet many of those people, perhaps ourselves included, face increasing pressure to work longer hours, wearying commutes, the tyranny of the urgent, and exhaustion. We may feel that we scarcely have time to think, let alone pray.
Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to 'pray continually'. The response to this by Brother Lawrence, who served as a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery in seventeenth-century Paris, was to train himself to be aware of God's presence throughout the day, irrespective of whether he was working in the kitchen or praying in the chapel - he saw no sacred-secular divide. How can we respond to Paul's exhortation?
Without the sustaining influence of a group, praying as individuals can be subject to more fluctuations than the FTSE. Work pressure, past disappointments in prayer, and lack of physical energy all play a part. Time to wait for anything, even on God, is seen as a luxury. Fresh and imaginative ways of praying in and for our workplaces are needed. Could there be a role for the 'virtual' fellowship and encouragement of other Christians on similar prayer journeys?
LICC have launched an initiative to help people at and for their work. Further details are available at
PrayerWorks 
