In looking at the life of Jesus, we see a man who prayed.

It was his practice to wake up early in the morning and go to a quiet place to pray. Often he would withdraw from the people he was ministering to and find a secluded place to converse with God. Many times he spent all night in prayer.

What is this thing called prayer? What is it about prayer that is so valuable that Jesus, the Son of God, spent such a large portion of his life doing it and encouraged his disciples to do it too? Why is prayer so important?

To learn more about prayer and the role it plays in the life of The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada (C&MA), cmAlliance.ca recently interviewed Rev. David Chotka, Chair of the Alliance Pray! Team.

What is Alliance Pray!?

Alliance Pray! is a catalyst. We are a team of people set apart by the General Assembly to equip prayer ministries across our movement and beyond. This means we show up, set things into motion, and let the newly equipped move forward.

Our Vision Statement reads: "Alliance Pray! is a Spirit-led catalytic movement to equip and mobilize followers of Jesus Christ in prayer in order to awaken, renew and revive Alliance churches and other Christian congregations for reaching the lost and transforming society."

How does Alliance Pray! work?

We work as a team toward achieving the goals and objectives identified in the Vision Statement. This takes many forms:

• Meeting by conference call and in-person (as time and finances allow) for prayer and planning.
• Teaching prayer events in churches across Canada and now beginning to travel to various Alliance fields overseas to teach prayer and do prayer equipping. The team has coordinated various prayer events designed to assist local churches in growing their prayer ministries. They include the four-day ?College of Prayer' and the Friday evening/Saturday ?Ignite Prayer.' I would be remiss if I didn't say that much of the earlier behind-the-scenes work in this area was done by Al and Lorraine Willems.
• Developing prayer resources for the past five General Assemblies. Also developing a Concert of Prayer based on the Lord's Prayer and another for the C&MA Vision Prayer.
• Working with our National Ministry Centre to set up prayer equipping/training days in conjunction with General Assembly and various prayer events across Canada. One year we partnered with the National House of Prayer for a prayer event in Ottawa.
• Serving as a catalyst to invite dedicated intercessors for Assembly. Churches were asked to send people whose primary role was to spend a minimum of four hours per day at Assembly seeking God for the outcomes being discussed in the business meetings.
• Overseeing the prayer room initiatives at those Assemblies.
• Leading Concerts of Prayer at the last three Assemblies.
• Networking with Canadian prayer leaders to seek the Lord for this country and also working with the American College of Prayer overseeing Prayer Equipping in Africa.
• Recently began working out how to resource the emerging Seamless Link prayer and social networks of support for our International Workers. The need is for our workers and congregations to deepen the prayer bonds between them in an intentional way.
• Increasingly, my role is to write and teach in this area. For example, I have been given the privilege to write for cmAlliance.ca concerning various elements of deepening one's prayer life. And I just completed writing a book entitled Power Praying.

Why is it important to promote prayer?

The C&MA was born in a prayer meeting. But far more important, as you intimated in the introduction, the Lord Jesus did his ministry as a direct result of his prayer life. It is astonishing beyond human imagining that we should find God at prayer.

Yet we have a consistent witness in the New Testament of Jesus our Lord, who is God the Son, carving out days and weeks to seek God's will, and then to do it. He not only prayed alone, but taught the apostles to pray with him as well.

He stated bluntly, "Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself unless it is something that he sees the Father doing" ( John 5:19?NASB). Every step he took and every deed he did, whether large or small, was done in conversation with God himself.

In a word, Jesus' ministry was an extension of his spiritual perception. This means that if Jesus, as God in human flesh, could do nothing apart from praying, perceiving and obeying, we can do no less. Prayer, then, is not only imperative, but mandatory.

There is no option.

If Jesus had to pray to get it done, so must we.

But here, prayer is far more than throwing questions and caveats at God while we muddle through our limitations, attempting to please him.

Prayer is deliberately hearing, discerning, understanding, trusting, obeying and carrying out our tasks, as God intervenes to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine.

It is two-way communication. It is imperative to understand that God starts the conversation?he became the Word made flesh. We read his Word and are moved to respond. We listen, attempt to discern, take a step and keep short accounts with God.

God intervenes and re-directs our steps. We joyfully concur and obey. This is the God-life, the God-walk.