The Prayers of Many (2 Corinthians 1.11)

For our first Sunday of 2025, we felt it was important to start the year off right and have a Sunday of prayer. We’ll be staying after lunch today for a prayer meeting, and I want this message to be preparation for that prayer meeting.

But before we get started, I have a confession to make. I am so thankful to God that today, we have a great team: we are three elders leading the church together, we have an incredible team of staff and deacons and administrators.

But for the first few years of this church, it was just me. When we launched Eglise Connexion in 2014, I was the lead (and only) planter and pastor, and although people stepped up very quickly to take on responsibilities, I was mostly alone leading the church until Paul and Arnaud came on as elders a few years in.

Here’s why I’m saying that. A long time ago I heard someone say to a group of pastors, “Five years after you take over, what’s wrong with your church is what’s wrong with you.” I didn’t have quite enough experience at the time to see for myself what he meant, but I do now.

I love our church so much—but it is not a perfect church. And of all the areas of improvement we can see from our position in the leadership, the most important and significant area in our opinion is this one. One cannot say that our church is a church that prays well. The people who do pray give it their all, and they’re wonderful and I’m so grateful. But they are in the minority. Our regular prayer meetings are not well attended—maybe ten people, on a good Sunday.

I have to take responsibility for that. From the beginning of our church, I didn’t emphasize prayer as I should have, so a lack of corporate prayer got sort of folded into the DNA of our church. I need to ask your forgiveness for that. Those of you who know me best know that I’m far from a perfect pastor, and this is one of the areas in which I have failed you the most.

There’s a reason why I’ve done a bad job in this—it was never a conscious decision, but looking back at it now, it’s easy to see. Prayer has always been the single hardest aspect of the Christian life for me. I have a difficult time with prayer as a habit—it’s really easy for me to read my Bible, study, say a quick prayer and move on to other things. Extended prayer as a regular habit is difficult. And I also have a difficult time with prayer as a concept—why does God ordain that we pray? Does prayer really make a difference? And what does our praying together, rather than separately, change about it?

These may be immature questions, and I haven’t yet found all the answers I’m looking for. But it doesn’t matter. Whatever questions I have, as I read the Bible I cannot escape that prayer, both private and corporate, are meant to be integral parts of our lives as disciples of Christ. So I have to reckon with the fact that I have failed you all in this regard. And please don’t come to me after the service and say, “No you haven’t.” I know some of you will want to make me feel better, and that’s very kind. But I have failed in this regard.

And although that truth weighs heavily on me, I also know it’s not too late. Regardless of my own difficulties, it’s never too late to just take the bull by the horns and just get on with doing what the Bible tells me to do.

So hopefully I can start making a course correction today—and I say “start” because it’s not something that can only happen once. We’ll start this course correction by speaking about a particular kind of prayer. We won’t be speaking about merely private prayer today, but specifically about the prayers we pray when we are gathered together as a church. What is corporate prayer, and why should we do it?

We’re going to be looking mainly at a single verse today, but it’s a significant one. Turn in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 1.

Paul Asks the Corinthians to Pray (2 Corinthians 1.11)

We’re going to start a couple of verses earlier to see the context.

This is the apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth; he’s describing a situation in which himself, Timothy and his other co-laborers found themselves. Let’s read v. 8-10 first.

8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

We’re not exactly sure what affliction Paul refers to in v. 8, but we know it was bad: it was a deadly situation, such that they despaired of life itself. And apparently Paul and the others were expecting to be faced with this kind of situation again in the near future, because he states his hope that God will deliver them again. Even so, he asks for the Corinthians’ help, and it is a very specific type of help. V. 11:

11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

He asks for their help. Not through financial or material gifts, but by prayer.

I’ve already told you this is an area of my life where I struggle, so I’m not going to claim to be an expert. I’m going to do my best to stick as closely to the text as possible in the next couple of minutes so you know that what I’m saying isn’t coming from me.

Let’s pick this verse apart a little.

Paul is expecting to be faced with another situation in the near future, in which he and his co-laborers are in danger. And although he has his hope set on the fact that God will deliver them, he asks for the Corinthians’ help in prayer: You must also help us by prayer.

Why must they help? What is the goal of their prayer? So that many will give thanks on our behalf.

To whom will they give thanks? It’s not stated here, but it’s clear from the context: they’ll give thanks to God.

So far so good. Now, why will they give thanks? For the blessing granted us. The blessing may be deliverance from a future trial, or it could be people coming to Christ through their ministry, or any number of things. The point is that when God is with Paul and his co-workers in their ministry, when he blesses them in their work, many will give thanks.

And lastly, he comes back to where he started. How will that blessing have come to them? Through the prayers of many.

So let’s take that verse in reverse, to get to the root at what he is saying. In this schema he’s asking the Corinthians to produce in their church, here’s what will happen: Many will pray. Through their prayers, Paul and his co-workers will be blessed in their ministry. And when others see that blessing, they will give thanks.

Do you see it? The prayers of many…result in the thanksgiving of many.

When God answers our prayers, the result is thankfulness. We get to see God’s hand at work, and God is glorified when we thank him for his hand at work.

Here’s what I’m trying to say: Paul’s goal in asking for prayer is not mainly that he will have an easy go of it. He’s not asking for prayer in order to be comfortable, and he’s not asking for prayer in order to stay alive. He’s asking for prayer in order that God may be glorified when people see him responding to their prayers.

It’s no mistake that when Christ gave us the Lord’s Prayer, he began that prayer with: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6.9). That is the most fundamental goal of all prayer: that God’s name would be glorified.

Challenges

Now obviously, that sounds good, but we know from experience that there are many challenges inherent in the idea of praying together.

Let’s face it: corporate prayer can be boring. When we speak of this kind of prayer, we’re not talking about a bunch of people in a room praying over one another; that’s just individuals praying in the same place. We’re talking about listening to one another pray and agreeing with what they are praying, joining our prayers to theirs. If you find yourself bored with corporate prayer, you’re probably forgetting the “agreeing” part; if you’re not engaged in the prayers of your brothers and sisters, of course it will be boring.

Corporate prayer is also humbling. By its very nature, it is not individualistic; it’s not the moment for me to voice my laundry list of complaints to God. Corporate prayer necessarily takes the focus off of ourselves and puts it on to God and others.

Likewise, corporate prayer can be intimidating. Most of us have been to prayer meetings in which Christians have prayed prayers that sound like poetry, or like they’re excerpts from a doctoral thesis, and we think, No way I’ll be able to follow that! Jesus warned us about thinking that by our many words, our prayers will be more likely to be heard; they won’t. Give me a simple prayer from a sincere heart over an elaborate prayer with a lot of words that mean little, any day of the week.

More essentially, corporate prayer requires sacrifice. This afternoon, you’re being asked to give up a chunk of your Sunday. We know that’s not nothing. Praying together isn’t something we do in a couple of minutes at the end of service. If we want our prayers to be truly together, it will take time, and it may not feel like there’s a huge “return on investment” right away.

Which brings us to what I believe is the most fundamental challenge of corporate prayer—or any prayer, really. Corporate prayer requires a big view of God: a big view of God that many of us don’t have. If your view of God is small, the sacrifice required, of your time and attention, won’t seem worth it. If your view of God is small, you’ll find a million other things you should be doing.

But if our view of God is big, if we truly believe he is capable of doing all that he can do, and that he listens to our prayers, then the sacrifice will definitely feel worthwhile. If we can glorify God by praying together and watching God’s response, then of course we will do it, because there’s nothing we want more than to glorify him.

Those are some challenges to corporate prayer. Now what are some positive reasons to do this?

“The Prayers of Many”

There is a lot we can glean from the simple fact that Paul is addressing a local church, asking them to help him by praying. He is asking, not that individuals would pray, but that the body of Christ in Corinth would pray.

John Piper put it this way: Corporate prayer is not a domestic intercom, but rather a wartime walkie-talkie. The goal of prayer is not to get God to give us things we want, as if he were our butler rather than our Commander-in-Chief. Corporate prayer exists to call in reinforcements and supplies when the battle is raging. Prayer for personal requests has its place—but prayer should never be only personal. Paul was praying for comfort, for himself and for others (cf. v. 3-7), so that the gospel might go forward unimpeded.

There are a number of reasons to approach prayer in this way—together—that we can deduce both from Scripture and from simple logic. I won’t mention all of them, but these are the few that have stuck in my mind over the last few weeks, as I’ve been working all this out in my own mind with the Bible in front of me.

First: When the church prays together, God answers. Of course this is true of individual prayer as well, but here’s the question I kept running up against: If, as he says in v. 10, Paul already believes God will deliver him and his co-workers, why would he ask the Corinthians to pray that God would do it? What would be the point?

This is a question I’ve run aground on many times, because I’m a Calvinist and believe that God is sovereign over all things. What is the point of praying if God will always and absolutely do his will?

Let me give you another example that I’ve already given before. A couple of years ago I installed a storage closet in our hallway. It’s a big closet, and our hallway is small, so it was a daunting project.

At the time, Zadie was four years old. And she wanted to help.

This was a dilemma. She was small, and I didn’t want her to get hurt; there wasn’t a lot of room to navigate in that hallway. On the other hand, I love her, and she wanted to be involved.

So I let her. It took twice as long as it would have if I had been alone, but she helped. Four-year-old Zadie hammered in forty-seven nails to the back of that closet. Some of them were crooked, some of them bounced off, and she did hit my fingers with the hammer more than once. But she did it.

Why would I go through the trouble of letting her be involved when I could have done it better and more quickly on my own?

Because that’s a memory she’s going to have of her dad for the rest of her life, and it’s a good memory. She still walks by that closet every day and sometimes mentions how we built it together. While we were building that closet, we were also working on our relationship.

C. S. Lewis put it this way (I’m paraphrasing): We freely accept the fact that God chooses to work through us, through the choices we make, through our practical obedience. People sometimes bump up against this idea of God working through prayer, but his working through prayer is no more illogical than God working through our actions. It’s a means he chooses to use to do his will.

So let’s come back to the original question:  If Paul already believes God will deliver him and his co-workers, why would he ask the Corinthians to pray that God would do it? The only answer that makes sense in the context of the rest of the Bible is this: Paul asks the Corinthians to pray because he believes their prayer will be part of God’s answer.

When people pray together, God answers. He might not answer in exactly the way we thought or hoped, but he will answer.

Secondly: When the church prays together, we learn to pray.

There is a reason why the Psalms were written down and are repeated and learned by the people of Israel and the Christian church today: we learn to pray by listening to others pray.

This is a benefit we cannot get if we only pray alone.

And I’m not talking about style—Jesus warned against imagining that by praying long, beautiful prayers God might take us more seriously. I’m talking about content. When we are immature believers, we often pray for immature things.

A new Christian (or any Christian, really) just learning to pray might have no idea of what it sounds like to talk to God. You might have a hard time finding things to say—after you’ve gone through your list of problems you want God to change, you’ve got nothing left. If that describes you, come to a prayer meeting and just listen. Pay attention to the way people pray, particularly if they pray with a Bible open in front of them. You could learn a lot—and, far more often than you might think, you’ll teach the brothers and sisters next to you just as much by your prayers, because your prayers haven’t become routine. They may be clumsy, but they’ll be genuine, and that genuineness has a kind of “new car smell” about it; it’s a kind of freshness that will encourage older Christians.

When people pray together, they learn to pray from one another.

This third point is related to the second: When the church prays together, we see bigger.

Paul and his friends felt they had received a death sentence. But, he says in v. 9, “that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” Their vision of God was so enormous that their hope wasn’t that God could maybe rescue them from their affliction, but that God can raise the dead. Even the worst-case scenario—their death—is no obstacle for God. If they die, and he so wishes, he can always bring them back from the dead.

The simple fact is that when people pray together, they stir one another up to a bigger vision of what God is capable of. As David Brian put it, “Corporate praying enlarges the vision of what we’re praying toward.” That’s what Paul is doing here, even though he’s not with them physically. He’s giving them an example of what fuels their prayers (not “God can get us out of a bind” but “God can raises the dead”).

And what Paul is doing happens almost every time I pray with other Christians. So often people pray for things I would never think to pray about. I have such a tendency to be insular that I often forget there’s a lot more going on beyond me. And then, we’ll be praying, and someone else will start praying for Togo, or for China, or for Iran, and suddenly my eyes are lifted higher than they were before. I’m remembering that our God is not a God of small things; he is the ruler of the entire world, who listens to the prayers of his people for the entire world.

Lastly: When the church prays together, we glorify God together.

I said earlier that when people pray together, God answers: Paul expects God to work through the prayers of the Corinthians for him. That is not to say that God is more likely to answer when several people pray as opposed to one. It’s not as if God is hard of hearing and needs a crowd yelling in unison for him to pick up that request. He is a good Father, who knows all things and loves his children, and he will listen to the prayers of one child just as he will listen to all of them.

There is a very simple logic to Paul’s request in v. 11. He’s not asking the Corinthians to pray together so that God will be more likely to respond. He’s asking them to pray together because when many people pray together for the same thing, and then God answers that prayer, those many people are aware that God answered the prayer, because they all prayed it.

It’s one thing to have the subjective experience of praying and seeing God answer. It’s quite another to be part of a group that prayed together and then say, “Did you see that? He answered our prayer!” And have your brothers or sisters say, “We saw it too!” At that point, it’s no longer subjective. It’s confirmed.

Few things give us a greater boost in our faith than seeing God’s hand at work. And few things stimulate us to gratitude more than thanking God together, for the same thing.

When people pray together, they glorify God together.

In a little while, the service is going to end and we’re going to eat. And after that, we’re going to stay here and we’re going to pray. We’re not going to pray specifically for the building project (it may come up, and that’s fine, but this prayer meeting isn’t for that purpose). We’re going to pray for the coming year: for our church, for our city, for our country, and for the world.

And our goal for this time of prayer is what we’ve been talking about today: that we might see God’s hand at work and glorify him together when we see him act.

This is my challenge, to myself first and foremost, and after to the rest of you: this year, I want to become a man of prayer, I want us all to become men and women of prayer, and I want us to become a church that prays together. let’s be a church that prays together. Let us help one another in prayer, so that many will give thanks for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.