July 2022
The Community News Flash
Prayer warrior eases others' burdens by lifting them to Lord anonymously By Lucy Weber Samantha Denton prays to ease the burden of others in need of prayer. This prayer warrior is a member of Chewalla Baptist Church in McNairy County, Tenn., and leads a prayer box ministry for those who anonymously seek God's love and healing through written requests. "We want to show the love of God. When I think of many people have prayed over me and how God has shown up and shown out, I want to do that for others. That's my prayer," she said. Denton and her aunt Wendy Bowers began leading a Bible study for women in the McNairy County jail before Covid hit. "When the good Lord opened up that door for me to go, I said let's go." On Saturday nights, she and her aunt led the women in studying the Bible and encouraged them to share their prayer requests. The jail had a strict anonymity policy and no names could be used. At first, the women in the group hesitated to trust Denton and Bowers and only offered very generic requests. "When they saw we could be trusted, we would tell them to pour their burdens out and allow us to take that burden off them. "We would take those prayer requests to our Sunday School class and those members would pray for them all week long," she said. Covid shut down the prison ministry during the outbreak. While they were able to restart the jail Bible
Samantha Denton
study, it is once again halted because a recurrence of cases there now. "We couldn't go in again so that started me thinking about my church family who are not releasing their burdens," she said, so she proposed to the pastor and deacons at Chewalla Baptist that the church start a similar, anonymous prayer ministry. "We didn't know how many are struggling with problems." With the blessing of church leadership, two, locked prayer boxes were put in the church. "Because I want people to feel comfortable (releasing their prayer concerns), I asked people to be on the prayer team to be tightlipped, to show discernment and compassion." Once a week, Denton will gather the contents of the prayer boxes and hand them out to prayer ministry team members to take home and pray. Now, Denton is preparing for a third prayer box to be added outside the church building, and along with a
Blessing Box supplying free cans of food for the community to take. At the church's annual Picnic in the Park that was open to the entire community to celebrate the Fourth of July, Denton announced the church's plans for a third prayer box that will be available in the parking lot so anyone can write down their requests for someone to pray for them anonymously. "We want to show them we really do care and show everyone the love of God. "Maybe they will see how we care and they will eventually step over our church threshold. We hope this shows that churches do care. We would love to see other places pick this idea up and do it." "God knows who these prayer requests come from. No one else needs to know. We want them to know it will all be private," Denton said. "We're treating folks like they want to be treated."
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