The Essentials of Praying Together
P = PREPARE (Ephesians 6:10-18)
We've lost the art of preparing for prayer. We're good at rushing into God's presence and knowing he receives us, but we're not so good at taking time to prepare for the momentous business of meeting with the King of kings.
Why prepare?
- Because God is worthy and he deserves our very best.
- Because most prayer is warfare, and we need to be kitted out for it.
REMEMBER: You don't need to prepare to become 'worthy' - you're already totally acceptable to God as you are, so don't get into the whole 'make me good enough thing'!
How do we prepare?
- Live the lifestyle: Paul talks about 'putting on ' the whole armour of God, so that we will be protected as we pray. We don't just pick up the different bits of armour for an hour or so while we're praying, we need to wear them - build them into our lifestyles, so that truth, righteousness, peace, faith and salvation become our spiritual clothing.
- Learn the promises: The Word of God needs to be the soundtrack to our prayers. If we read it, learn it, know it, it will shape the way we pray and make our prayers sharper. If we don't, the soundtrack to our prayers will be doubt and confusion. Get back to the old art of learning Scripture by heart.
- Lock shields: Paul talks about taking up the shield of faith. The shield he would have been most familiar with was the door-sized one, carried by Roman soldiers. As they went into battle, they locked their huge shields together to create a massive shell of protection around them. As we go into prayer, we need to be connected, united, locked together with the people we're praying with.
Creative Ideas:
- Before you start praying, spend some time looking at Ephesians 6:10-18 (the armour of God), and ask God to fit you out with the things you're feeling low on ('Lord, please give me more faith...').
- 'Lock shields' by each spending a few minutes praying with one other person in the room, before you get into worship and prayer for your community.
R = REMEMBER (Psalm 78:1-8)
In the Old Testament, we read of God telling his people over and over again to 'remember'. In fact, he institutes it as a spiritual discipline. 'Whatever you do, make sure you spend time remembering what I have done for you'.
The people of God remembered by recording and retelling the amazing things God had done for them, and, on the whole, when they took time to remember, they stayed on the right track, and when they didn't, they went wrong.
Why is remembering so important when we come to pray?
- We need to practise gratitude. Remembering God's goodness releases thankfulness and faith - both essential for effective prayer.
- We need to hold on to what God has already given us. New projects and churches are most likely to fail because they don't hold on to what God has given them - they are so focused on moving forward to the next step that they don't hold the ground they have already taken. 'Holding the ground' is a work of prayer, and we can only do it if we regularly take time to remember the people and things God has given us, and ask him to protect them.
- We need to look at the past for sign-posts to the future. When we don't know where to go next, remembering what God has done and is doing often provides some valuable pointers to what we need to be asking for next.
So - when you start to pray, start to remember.
Creative Ideas:
- Build altars: Ask people in the group to choose everyday objects which remind them of specific things God has done in their lives or in your church. Then ask them to explain why they've chosen what they've chosen.
- Get a large container, and ask the group to write down the names of everyone they can think of who belongs to, or is in contact with, your church. Put them all in the container as a symbol of your commitment to surround and protect them in prayer.
O = OBSERVE (1 Peter 5:6-9)
We have an enemy. That is a fact. Jesus spoke more about his enemy than he did about many other things. Peter describes this enemy as a 'roaring lion, waiting for someone to devour'. Satan's purpose in life is to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10). Our job is to spot where and how he's doing it, then to pray him out of the water.
We come to prayer with a whole stack of ideas about what the real problems are - what's happening in our community, church or family. But do we ever stop to observe what is actually going on? Can we put a finger on exactly what the enemy is using to frustrate the work of the Kingdom where we are?
This passage from 1 Peter gives a few helpful hints.
- Humble yourselves: We need to be prepared to lay down our own agendas and our own ideas of what God needs to do in our communities. We need to accept that our idea of a big problem is not always the same as God's idea of a big problem. Real prayer can only kick in when we get around to laying down our agenda and looking for God's.
- Throw your own anxieties on God: It will be hard to see what the enemy is up to if we're blinded by our own problems and worries. We need to hand them over to God, knowing that he cares for us.
- Be wise and keep your eyes open: In the end, it's just about looking... going out into our communities and letting God open our eyes to what is really going on. What is binding people? What is leading people down fruitless, life-destroying dead-ends? What is winning people's worship? What is shaping their lives?
Creative Ideas:
- Don't just stay in the cosy prayer room... go and have a look! Send your prayer meeting on an 'observation walk'. Walk around your community, observing what is going on, then come back and share what you've found. You may even want to bring back items that symbolise what you've discovered.
- Look through the local newspapers, finding evidence of how the enemy is destroying your community. Then pray!
D = DREAM (1 Corinthians 2:6-10a)
Satan's ultimate reality is death and destruction. It is what he knows best and what he works for. He worked for Jesus ultimate destruction, and honestly thought he'd achieved it.
But . 'We speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.'
Or, in the words of Aslan the lion in C. S. Lewis's The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe: 'There is a magic deeper still which she (the witch) did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim, who had committed no treachery, was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.'
God's reality is far deeper, far stronger and far older than anything Satan can imagine. Before the creation of the universe, he decided that love, peace, redemption and salvation would be the hallmarks of his Kingdom, and that decision is irreversible.
All that remains for us is to live in God's reality rather than the enemy's; to see beyond the hopelessness to the hope which was established at the very beginning.
- We need to be praying God's reality into being.
- We need to be living God's reality for those around us - 'Jesus in us, the hope of glory'!
...and let's end with another quote:
'Intercession visualises an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current forces. Prayer infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present. History belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being.' (Walter Wink)
Creative Ideas:
- Do some prayer sabotage: go out into your community and pray in places which need prayer.
- Be the hope of glory: go out and enact the values of the Kingdom - help someone carry their shopping, buy a homeless person a sandwich, do some other random act of kindness.