Category: Prayer

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Prayer

Transparency – Where Do You Need the Most Prayer Right Now?

In my previous post, I mentioned to you that our Disciple-Groups started with personal prayer needs and that doing so required transparency on our part.
image of man kneeling in prayer - reminding us also of our need for transparency
Even so, sometimes we don’t quite know where to start. Therefore, we use the following guide to help us share personal prayer needs.

The reason I’m sharing them with you, is that these are not just good for giving others information on how to pray for you, but it can also give you guidance on how to pray for yourself. Read through them one time, and then go back through them praying for each one that applies to your life.

For which of these items do you need the most prayer right now?
     a. Your relationship with God?
             i. Personal Daily Bible Reading
             ii. Personal Prayer Life
             iii. Personal Purity

     b. Your relationship with your spouse?
             i. Face-to-Face Time together
             ii. Prayer/devotional time together (other than meals & family devotions)

     c. Your relationship with your children?
             i. Prayer/devotional time together (other than meals)
             ii. Walking and talking time together

     d. Your relationship with your coworkers?
             i. Workplace Pastor Role
             ii. Planting Seeds of the Gospel to those who work around you

We also ask that each person will share how God is leading them, and the following questions can help provide you ways to answer. These can provide you with additional guidance on how to pray for yourself, and how to ask others to pray for you.How would you answer each one?
     a. What good habit or character trait do you feel God wants to form in your life?
        And how have you taken specific steps to develop that habit?
     b. How are you leading your family to be closer to the Lord?
     c. As a “workplace pastor,” how are you leading your coworkers to be closer to the Lord?
     d. What is God presently telling you to do & what are you doing about it?
     e. How have you turned a conversation toward Christ since our last meeting?
     f. How has the Bible shaped the way you think and live since our last meeting?
     g. What opportunities did God give you to serve others since our last meeting?
     h. How have you received a specific answer to a prayer since our last meeting?

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Prayer

Sharing Personal Prayer Needs with Others is Important

In my previous post, I shared the commitments of our FBC Newton Discipleship-Groups. Along with those commitments, what actually happens when the group meets? One important aspect is sharing personal prayer needs.

By Personal Prayer Needs, we mean prayer requests that you have for yourself or for your immediate family (as in the people who live in the house with you). Most of us are good at sharing the prayer needs of other people around us, but we are seldom transparent about what we need prayer for the most in our own lives. Being honest and transparent in this way takes trust. That trust is more easy to develop in a small D-group than in a Sunday School class of 12 people.

We believe that prayer is effective at changing lives, and so we ask for Personal Prayer Needs and then we take the time to pray together for one another.

Are you sharing personal prayer needs with anyone in your life? Or do you keep all of those to yourself?

praying hands symbolizing the need for prayer, but also encouraging personal prayer needs being shared with others
Who Can You Get To Join You In Praying For Your Personal Prayer Needs?

In conjunction with these prayer needs, we then ask for each person to share what God has been teaching them through their Bible reading. This is where we share what we have written down that God has been teaching us. This could be something challenging, helpful, interesting, or difficult from your Bible reading. Again, these are also often a form of prayer needs, as someone might say, “As I was reading this passage about controlling the tongue, God pointed out to me to watch how I talk to my wife. I have been pretty harsh lately.” This becomes an additional transparent prayer need that we can pray for as a group.

As we read God’s Word, we ask each person to ask: “What applications can I find in the passage to help me live for Christ more consistently?”

One way you can do this is to use C.A.S.E. to find application points. As you read the Bible, look for:

    C – Commands to obey
    A – Attitudes to change
    S – Sins to avoid or confess
    E – Examples to follow

Then we pray to end our meeting, asking God to help us apply something specific that we have discussed/discovered in our meeting.

As I wrote previously, I will say again: You need this in your life!
You need to be discipled by others and you need to be discipling others.
That is the calling on your life to “Go and make disciples” that Jesus commanded of you.

Are you reading your Bible with a view toward how to apply it to your life? The Bible gives us clear application of how to live in a way to bring glory to our great God.

Who do you have in your life that you are able to share personal prayer needs with? Who do you know is truly committed to praying for you? Who can you ask to pray for you regarding the applications you are gaining from your Bible reading? There are people out there who are willing to be in a group with you to do this. If you aren’t sure who they are, begin praying now that God will point them out to you, and then invite those two or three people to start a group with you.

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Prayer

Developing a Significant Prayer Life is Essential

How will we ever get to the point where we realize that our lives are more about relationships with God and with others, and not so much about work and money and news and politics? Through “Significant Time in Prayer and Bible Study.” What do I mean by significant prayer life?

One definition of the word significant is: substantial; relatively large in amount.
Is that how you would characterize your Prayer and Bible Study time?

In his book How to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life, Dr. Gregory Frizzell’s rightly states:
a man with arms stretched out in worship as part of significant prayer

“No one’s relationship with Christ will ever rise above the level of his or her praying. Put simply, if your prayer life is inconsistent and weak, so will be your relationship with God…. Brief, inconsistent prayer times never produce powerful Spirit-filled believers. Furthermore, brief inconsistent prayer never has and never will bring a Great Spiritual Awakening. In America, we have made a “god” out of the ideas of convenience and ease. We want to give God a brief minute or two and try to fit Him into our busy schedules if it is convenient. The God of the Universe deserves and requires far more than this to release His full power on our lives. If Jesus and the early church spent much time in prayer, what makes us think we can do less? If every generation which saw a sweeping Great Awakening spent much time in prayer, why would we think God has changed His requirement for today? God’s requirements have not changed and they never will. Unfortunately, what has changed is our definition of what constitutes a powerful prayer life. A three or four minute daily devotion is not what is meant by a powerful prayer life.”

I would think that “significant prayer time” means at least 30 minutes in uninterrupted time with God – reading His Word to hear from Him and offering back our prayers in response. Now if our immediate reaction is: “I can’t commit to 30 minutes of time with God,” then that means we still have a long way to go in understanding the meaning of life and the heart of God. We make significant time for other things. When will we set aside a significant amount of time for God?

Pray that God would transform you into a person that desires to spend significant time with Him.

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Prayer

A Powerful Prayer for Today

a relief sculpture of a person prayingR.A.Torrey: We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little …many services but few conversions….

I ran across this prayer during my reading and thought it was excellent. I hope you won’t just read it, but that you will pray it for yourself and for your church this morning…

“God, give us tears for our sins. Forgive us for being so shallow in prayer, …so content amid perishing neighbors, so empty of passion and earnestness in all our conversation. Restore to us the childlike joy of our salvation. …Cause us to hold to the cross with fear and trembling as our hope-filled…tree of life. Grant us nothing, absolutely nothing, the way the world views it. May Christ be all in all.
…Oh God, place [within us] passionate prayer, poverty of spirit, hunger for God, rigorous study of holy things, white-hot devotion to Jesus Christ, utter indifference to all material gain, and unremitting labor to rescue the perishing, perfect the saints, and glorify our sovereign Lord.
Humble us, O God, under Your mighty hand, and let us rise…as witnesses and partakers of the sufferings of Christ. In His awesome name. Amen.”
(from John Piper in Brothers, We are not Professionals)

What else would you add to a prayer that we should all be praying today?

— brian rushing

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Prayer

doin’ nuthin’

I’m thinking that maybe I should plan on doing nothing today. How much nothing are you planning on doing this week?

great dane sleeping and doing nothing with her paw over her face“We need to wake up to how much “nothing” we spend our time doing. Apart from prayer, all our scurrying about, all our talking, all our study amounts to “nothing.” For most of us the voice of self-reliance is ten times louder than the bell that tolls for the hours of prayer… Both our flesh and our culture scream against spending an hour on our knees.” (John Piper – Brothers, We are not Professionals)

We feel that there is so much else we “need” to do. But what could be time better spent than conversing with the King of the Universe? I hope you will carve out some time this morning to slow down, stop doing “nothing,” and talk with your Creator before you begin your busy day.

— brian rushing