Prayer
A Holy Confession
This confessional prayer was used at the Erie Christian Business Leaders Prayer Breakfast in 2017. You may wish to use this responsive prayer with your small group to commit yourselves to God’s plan and to ask God’s blessing over our region.
The group leader should read the prayer, with the group members joining in unison for the section in bold print.
Group Conversation Prayer
How to Turn Your Group Prayers Into a Real Conversation with the Holy Spirit
Conversation prayer is praying with a group using a direct, simple, and brief conversational style. It’s natural and scriptural. The prayer is based on the premise that God is concerned about everything in our lives, and the essential elements are an embrace of the Holy Spirit’s presence and a dependence on the Holy Spirit to guide the prayers.
Using the Lord’s Prayer as a Model
“I’m praying for you.” Have you ever said this to small-group leaders under your care, only to realize that you have no idea how to pray effectively for them? If so, you’re not alone. How should you pray for those that God has entrusted to you? When asked how to pray, Martin Luther’s answer was, “Use the Lord’s Prayer.” Luther saw this prayer as the model, the go-to prayer appropriate for nearly any situation. But Luther didn’t merely recite the prayer; he used it as an outline to guide his prayer time. After all, Luther reminds us that Jesus said, “This is how you should pray,” not “This is what you should pray.”
Are You Listening?
How do you hear the “still, small voice” of God in your life? Watch this video, and then take some time to ponder it’s relevance to your own life.
Laying a Solid Foundation with Prayer
Prayer is a vital component of small-group life. It sets up and maintains the health and vibrancy of your group. Sound prayer practices can affect your group in the following ways:
- Positively influence how your small-group participants interact and minister to one another
- Empower and mobilize your small group to reach out and incorporate spiritually unconvinced people into the body of Christ
- Open the hearts of the hurting to God’s healing power
- Open the ears of those who do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ to the gospel message
For these reasons, you should incorporate prayer throughout your small-group meeting. While each meeting should include prayer, you can keep things fresh by changing how you pray.
Click Here for full Smallgroups.com article.
Prayer – Philip Yancey
If God knows everything, why pray? Why do answers seem inconsistent and unpredictable? How can I make prayer more satisfying? Explore the most mysterious aspect of our relationship with God! Based on Yancey’s best-selling Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? this 6-session study illuminates a sometimes confusing yet infinitely rewarding activity.
Participant guides and the DVD may be purchased online or at your favorite local bookstore.
A Proper Understanding of Group Prayer
It’s the end of your group’s Bible study time. Almost with a cringe (because you’ve become conditioned to what’s about to transpire for the next 30 seconds or 30 minutes), you say something like: “Okay, time to shift into our prayer time. Anybody got anything we need to be lifting up this week?”
What follows is either:
1. A colossally awkward silence where you are thinking: Really? Nothing? Are your people dead inside? And your group members are thinking: Really? Share serious life stuff with everyone here? Are you stupid inside?
2. A verbal cascade of prayer requests lasting 12 minutes each with tears, laughter, gossip, and maybe a little anger all wound up into such a mess that you have no idea what the bombardier who started this raid actually wants you to pray for.
Finally, after the awkward silence or the monologues, you say something like, “Who will close us in prayer?” This leads to a single prayer, probably by the unfortunate soul who made eye contact with you when you asked that question, and it lasts about 30 seconds. “God thanks for letting us meet, be with all the stuff we just talked about for 30 minutes, keep us safe this week, amen. No wait-in Jesus’ name, Amen.