Early Christian Religion Essay

Prayer Early Christians were already in the habit of prayer. They were Jewish and already knew God. Jesus made Him even more personal though. With Him came Grace and atonement for our sins. The earliest reference to prayer in Christian Liturgy came in the Didache written in 120 AD which said that Christians were praying three times a day; morning, noon and night. They were praying as Jesus had taught, the Lord’s Prayer. And by the fourth century the Church prayed communally more than individually. Psalms and hymn had been incorporated, too (Birch). Over the centuries different forms of prayer were found and used to connect to God. Several forms of prayer may be linked together to form the most intense experience for the Christian in connection to the Master. Prayer is one of the most important of the spiritual disciplines because it is like our telephone to the Lord’s ear. It is our route to communicate to Him our gratitude, our confession, our petitions for others, and our petitions for ourselves. Most …show more content…
We see the early Christians pray in Acts 4:24-26 like this,
“They lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, ‘O Lord, it is You who made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David your servent, said [quoting Psalm 2], ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples devise futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ’” The Word incarnates prayer means that prayers are mostly invisible and held within the soul both in the closet and in the church. However their effects are out in the open in the lives of many and through the nations. Through direct encounters of His word, God advances His purposes in cultural reformation, personal transformation, and world evangelization (Piper,