By Mike Clemmer
Years ago, as I began my first pastorate, my wife gifted me with a beautiful hand-crafted kneeling bench. She knew how important it would be for my ministry to daily spend time with the Lord in prayer and “bow down, kneel before the Lord, and acknowledge that He is God” (Psalm 95:6).
Time with the Lord and before the Lord is paramount in hearing from God and in worshipping the Lord. Through prayer and the scriptures, we learn more of God’s heart. We also invite the Holy Spirit to speak and guide our thoughts and actions. It is a daily practice that is too important to avoid or dismiss.
I keep the prayer bench in my church office and find myself on the kneeling rail often. Yet unfortunately, I also find myself walking past it way too often as well. Perhaps my pride tells me that I already know what’s best or maybe I simply feel like I do not have the time to pray. In any case, my time of kneeling before the Lord is often hijacked by my own selfish thoughts and interests.
As I begin 2023, the reminder of my need to pray and prioritize time before the Lord is more timely than ever. With busy schedules and the pressures of ever-changing cultural norms, discernment surrounding matters of faith and the church has become a very difficult task. We long for a clear word from the Lord on all matters of faith and practice, yet we often walk right past our prayer benches. Instead, we look for clear direction through what feels best or what makes the most sense to us. I find myself even speaking for God on some of these things without ever spending the time on my prayer rail listening to God’s voice.
Mosaic Conference is also in the midst of a discernment process. Conference delegates recently passed the Pathways Document which lays out a plan forward in discerning our relationship with each other, with Mennonite Church USA (MC USA), as well as other matters of practice in the church.
In the Pathways document, the first bullet point is a reminder for all of us to kneel before the Lord and pray. It states:
We believe that we are called by God in this time: To share in the practice of continued prayer and fasting so that we may discern, yield, and listen to the Spirit among us.
This is a simple call to prayer and fasting. It is an invitation for all of us to spend time in God’s presence and to listen to and yield to what the Spirit tells us. How will we respond to this call to prayer? Will we be able to kneel on our prayer benches each day, study God’s word, and allow the Spirit to speak to us, or will we simply walk by and believe that we already know what God wants for us?
My prayer is that we can all humbly prioritize prayer and the spiritual disciplines in our journey towards discernment and that God’s voice will clearly be heard as we bow before God’s throne each day in 2023.
Mike Clemmer
Mike Clemmer is a Conference Leadership Minister and serves as the pastor of Maple Grove Mennonite Church (Lancaster Conference).
The opinions expressed in articles posted on Mosaic’s website are those of the author and may not reflect the official policy of Mosaic Conference. Mosaic is a large conference, crossing ethnicities, geographies, generations, theologies, and politics. Each person can only speak for themselves; no one can represent “the conference.” May God give us the grace to hear what the Spirit is speaking to us through people with whom we disagree and the humility and courage to love one another even when those disagreements can’t be bridged.