18 Feb 10:00 Saturday Night
I’ve been slow to post about the book “Prayer Coach” that we began a month or so ago. Well, I have been wondering if any of you have used the prayer patterns, i.e. praying through the armor, or the fruit of the Spirit, or even you body. It certainly provides a new, fresh approach to prayer.
I like that it’s so teachable. You could teach a new believer to pray like that. And after all, that is one of purpose of the book–that we leaders begin coaching prayer. Anyone have any neat stories about trying it?
In reading the book, God has given me many flashbacks to events in my life that center on prayer. I think he just wants me to remember the power of prayer.
As I was reading recently, I remembered a time when I called for a special period of prayer at 10 PM on Saturday night to begin the first of September. The purpose: to pray for revival in our church. As you can well imagine, not many showed up. Actually, most of the time just one man showed up to join me in praying.
Harold I would would gather at the altar. Sometimes we would go through the sanctuary, stopping at each pew praying for those who would be sitting there the next morning. Sometimes we went to every classroom and prayed for the teachers and students who would be in those rooms the next day.
EJ and I lived about 3-4 miles from the church, and some Saturday nights I groaned when it was time to leave. But I went because I knew Harold would be there.
Harold lived just about half a block from the church. The man could pray. We prayed together at the altar until summer. When Harold passed away some time later, I began to reflect on his life, his friendship, and his love for the Lord. Looking back over church stats, I realized that the church had one of its greatest growth spurts during the time we were praying at the altar at 10 PM on Saturday night.
Well, don’t know why I told all that, but I do believe that God is interested in his children coming to him with their needs, burdens, and praises.
Pastor John
Posted at 12:28h, 20 FebruaryI’ve been really enjoying bedtime prayers with my 4 year old son lately. Taking ideas from the book, we have been working on prayer being about a conversation with God – no two times are identical. He liked it the first time and wanted to pray “just like last time” the next night. But, I explained to Jackson that I didn’t remember exactly how we prayed, but that we start our conversations fresh each time. Jackson will ask me to pray first, then we pray together. I’ll ask him questions about his relationship with God, and then we pray together through the answers. We go back and forth thinking about different aspects of God’s love for us and those we know. It sure beats the old way. Jackson really looks forward to prayer time with daddy. I look forward to prayer time with Daddy, too.
LA
Posted at 10:05h, 27 FebruaryI don’t have any neat stories on coaching prayer, per se, but your post (and remark that leaders should be coaching prayer) reminded me of an article I read yesterday at Crosswalk.com.
In the article, Joe McKeever talks about how when pastors pray from the pulpit true and honest prayers that really bring the congregation before the throne of God come out of the intimacy of their prayer life during the week and that people automatically learn the style of prayer that the pastor gives. So if it is lifeless and stale and repetitious, they learn that…
Even though I’m not a pastor and am not teaching/leading as often now as I have in the past, it really challenged me to not skimp on my times with God and allow my prayers to flow from that – rather than simply going through the motions!