Power of Prayer

Jenny was on the ol’ family computer last night working on a bunch of stuff for KidStuf coming up this fall and I was not able to write about our prayer time last night at church.

We felt impressed to have a time where the church comes together to pray, fast on Wednesday, and seek God for our people. We began this Wednesday night prayer and communion this summer. Last night was another awesome night!

We had conversational prayer for about an hour. I first learned about conversational prayer while serving in Texas and going through MasterLife while a seminary student. Our youth ministry leaders would get together often to simply pray for our students and their families. Most of the time, the times of conversational prayer. I can remember a specific time while at Hopedale that we had an extremely powerful prayer meeting in my office praying for students before a DiscipleNOW . . . another time of conversational prayer.

Some characteristics of conversational prayer are:

• Short sentence prayers are lifted up for each topic.
• The prayer flows much like a conversation, from topic to topic.
• Each topic is prayed for completely before moving on to another topic.

Some advantages to this type of prayer are:

• We spend time actually praying instead of talking about praying “in a bit.”
• Sometimes “prayer requests” can become too much like gossip. Just pray for them please!! You don’t need to know all of the details, the Lord knows!!
• It is really cool to hear all of the “yes, Lords” when someone adds a great statement to the conversation. Many people praying for many facets of each topic is better than simply one person talking.
• It lends itself to full participation from all in attendance.
• It helps prevent “prayer filibusterers”or one person monopolizing the whole time.
• Prayer “requests” are not “put on the list,” but are prayed for right then and there.
• As the conversation moves along, there is a broader array of topics covered than a previously planned time of prayer. The concerns that the Lord puts on people’s hearts are the concerns that are prayed for during that meeting.

I was blown away by several people who are very quiet usually that prayed out loud and if they hadn’t prayed, we all would have really missed the Spirit’s speaking to us! It is really cool to see people growing in their faith and our church growing together. We have a super long way to go until we “reach maturity” as the Scriptures say, but we are headed in the right direction. I believe these times of prayer are a KEY to that maturity.