A prayer seminar was held in November on the territory of Zalesia, which was attended by representatives of six churches of our union. Kolomyya, Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne, Sarny, Kiev and Novograd-Volynsky were represented there. It was a great time of communication, testimony and edification. We prayed for each other and thanked God for His great deeds in our lives and the lives of our churches. We also prayed intensely for all those churches that our union consists of, but for some reason nobody came to the seminar from that churches.
Pastor Plyva Igor prepared interesting lessons. The main questions of the seminar were: “Why is our prayer powerful?” and “How does it reach to God?”. We were talking about the passage from 1-Corinthians 14:15: “What is then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also”. Often we forget about this Person and we hope a lot for ourselves regarding prayers. We are self-confident and we think that we know exactly what and how to say to God. But the Scripture teaches us that only the Holy Spirit can direct our prayer and reveal to us how to talk to Our Heavenly Father. At the seminar there was a great opportunity to analyze our hearts and see who we put our hope in. So, despite the fact that one have been with God for a long time, he or she understands how little he or she knows about Him. The result was more and more gratitude born in our hearts to Him that He did not leave us alone in this world, but He gave us His Holy Spirit to teach and guide us.
During the seminar representatives of every church told us about needs, problems, worries, thanks and joys of their church. Then we all prayed to God for His mercy and help. This was a wonderful and valuable time when we got closer to each other through prayer and could feel the unity at least a little bit as it would be in heaven.
In the evening we gathered together and sang the glory to our God, for He deserves it. Then we just talked to each other about what God does in our lives and sang praises to Him again. It is not often in our daily life that we can find time for such fellowship and worship, but this is important and necessary!
We pray for all of you and each other! We invite you all to the next seminar, which will be in March. Our Lord is worthy of all the glory and our prayers to Him. Also our country and our churches need someone to pray for them. These seminars give opportunity to do both.
Ira Plyva
