by Tim Isbell
#prayer
Parishioners welcome new resources that help them move beyond sending lists of needs to God. Pastors continually look for fresh material for that Prayer Time Teachable Moment just before the weekly worship prayer time. So whether you are a parishioner or a pastor, here are some fresh resources on prayer:
Click on an item in the Table of Contents below to jump to it.
This book subtitled Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, refreshed my prayer life. My copy is now heavily annotated with notes and lots of "Q's" to denote quotes to harvest to my Quotes File. For this book, I typed up my takeaways, rearranging them in an order that made sense to me. You can access these at Concepts from Timothy Keller's book: Prayer.
Here's an example from Keller's book of some content I've used a few times for Prayer-time Teachable Moments. Paul’s prayers in the epistles are not so much asking to deal with the massive day-to-day problems the people in Ephesus and other churches must have experienced. In Eph 1.15-23, Paul prays for God to enlighten the hearts of his readers so that they will know God better. (Another scripture possibility is Phil 1.9-11) We must have these perspectives if we are to face life in any circumstance. (Prayer, pgs. 19-22)
Pray the Lord's Prayer out loud. Then use it as a template for your prayer. Here's a personal example from the first few lines of the Lord's Prayer, as in Matthew 6.9-10.
Our Father who is in heaven. Reflect for a moment on the privileged standing God offers through Jesus. Here, Jesus tells me that God, the creator and sustainer of everything, wants me to address him with the familial name that Jesus uses: Father. That's big. I don't know of any other religion that offers such a thing. Dwelling on this thought speaks deeply to my identity in Christ and within God's family!
May your name be holy. My kids call me "Dad," which was what I called my father. So, I'm asking my heavenly Dad to help me show a snippet of his holiness through my everyday life. Further, I urge him to show his holiness to all nations and cultures. Letting this soak in impacts how I carry myself through the day.
May your Kingdom come soon. Here, Jesus shifts the metaphor from family to the family business: building Dad's Kingdom. So, I'm asking Dad to plant his values so deeply in my life that I will joyfully follow them as I live temporarily at an address in a kingdom of this world. And I'm asking Dad to continue extending his Kingdom to every corner of the world.
May your will be done on earth. Such a statement affirms to Dad that I'll accept adversity as part of my spiritual formation process - even though I may not understand it then. In the same way, I'm affirming that I will trust him as he extends his will throughout the world.
Sometimes I use this as a prelude to a longer prayer; sometimes it's enough by itself.
(Note: this perspective on the Lord's Prayer comes from my understanding and reflection on the first part of chapter 8 in Timothy Keller's Prayer - Experiencing the Awe and Intimacy with God.)
Praying scripture is an excellent practice. Just find a prayer in scripture and use it as your template. There are examples throughout the entire Bible, especially in the Psalms. Select one, such as from the Psalm of the weekly lectionary, read it, and then use its structure to frame your prayer.
The heavens speak silently of your creative power.
Your instructions embody perfect wisdom that revives the soul.
Even knowing all our sins, You offer us cleansing.
May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts
Be pleasing to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
O Lord, I know trusting my wits leads to disgrace; (vv.1-3)
And I can’t see the path ahead, but you can. (vv.4-5)
But I’m confident of your compassion (empathy), forgiveness, and unfailing love; (vv.6-7)
So, when I stray or stumble, I will ask, and you will provide redemption. (vv.8-10)
Amen
Lord, thank you for light, salvation, and protection. / Thank you for healing my soul. / Even if you don’t cure all my symptoms, I will trust your goodness through “dark nights of the soul.” / Amen.
You, O Lord, are a loving Creator (vv.1-5) / You are sovereign over the nations (vv.6-11) / We are Your inheritance (v.12) / You fashion our hearts (vv.13-17) / You are worthy of our hope (vv.18-22) / Amen.
And here’s a more personal adaptation from 76 years of living:
You, O Lord, are the source of all I know about loving and nurturing others. / Thank you for sharing some sovereignty with me. / I am honored to serve as your inheritance. / Thank you for fashioning my heart and allowing me to work with you to fashion the hearts of others who are part of our inheritance. / You are worthy of all our hope. / Amen.
Lord, I remember with deep gratitude when you lifted me from the mud and mire, placed my feet on solid ground, and steadied me as I walked along. Show me opportunities to share this hope with others.
Because God controls nature and history, his people dare face the chaotic threats inherent in human existence, conflicts, and natural disasters. This psalm has three stanzas that we can use to frame a prayer for ourselves, others, someone else, or a group:
Verses 1-3 testify to God’s protection. (So we can ask for His protection.)
Verses 4-7 testify to God’s presence. (We can ask Him to make His presence known to the person or people in a group.)
Verses 8-11 testify to God’s power. (So we can ask Him to 'empower the work of our hands,' or for the hands of others.)
O Lord, we will rest before You, because our hope is in You.
You alone are our rock, salvation, and fortress.
Our victory and honor come from You alone.
You are our refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach us.
So we will trust in You this week.
We will pour out our hearts to You, for you are our refuge. Amen
I love you, Lord, because you bend down and listen.
When I face danger, I call on you to save me.
When I am anxious, I cry out to you.
Because of all you’ve done for me,
I will praise your name.
I will keep my promises to you in the presence of your people.
I know you care deeply when your loved ones die.
O Lord, I am your servant,
Adopted into your household.
You have freed me from evil’s chains.
So I offer Thanksgiving
and lift praises to your name.
O Lord, I give you thanks and praise for your love and faithfulness. Holy is your name and Word. You give meaning to my life.
Someday, all the earth will thank you and sing about your ways, for Your glory is great. Though you are high above us, you see and know everything about us. You pay attention to the lowly but perceive the proud from a distance.
And I’m confident that you will save me from the trouble and turmoil of this world, so I put my forever life in your hands. - Amen
Praise the Lord for all he created beyond our world. / … for the things of the earth. / … for the many kinds of people who inhabit the earth. / … for his covenant with the descendants of Jacob/Israel. / … for Christian brothers and sisters in the nations. Extend the psalm to praise the Lord for the new age when Jesus returns. / … and for whatever may follow that!
Think of someone you know who is not currently fully following the Lord or not following Jesus at all. Maybe they are a loved one or family member. Use Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3.16-21 as a template for praying for that person. For instance, if you choose to pray this prayer for a man named Jerry, it might look like this:
“Lord God, I pray that your unlimited resources will empower Jerry with inner strength through Your Spirit. Then Christ will make His home in Jerry’s heart as he trusts You. May Jerry’s roots grow down into Your love and keep him strong. And may he have the power to understand how wide, long, high, and deep Your love is. May he experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then Jerry will become complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from You. Now all glory to You, who is able, through Your mighty power at work within Jerry, to accomplish infinitely more than he might ask or think. Glory to You in the Church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, forever and ever! Amen.” (You can, of course, modify this prayer for a couple.)
Adjust Paul’s prayer for yourself, someone else, or your local church: 1) love will overflow more and more, 2) growth in knowledge and understanding, 3) understanding what really matters, 4) help living pure and blameless lives, 5) righteous character.
Thank You, Jesus, for:
Forgiving my sins (v.15-16a)
Trusting me with assignments (v.12)
Providing strength for them (v.12)
Filling me with faith and love (v.14)
Using me as an example for others (v.16b)
All honor and glory to God forever and ever! You are the eternal King, the unseen one who never dies; you alone are God. Amen. (v.17)
Intercede for all people, including unbelievers. Ask God for mercy on them and thank God for them.
Pray this way for leaders, too, and ask God to help them lead in ways that allow their people to live:
Peaceful lives (lacking inward disturbances)
Quiet lives (lacking outward disturbances)
Godly lives (that properly reverence the Lord God of all Creation)
Dignified lives (of proper conduct, honorable, worthy of respect)
Prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine. – Kathleen Norris
The purpose of prayer is to surrender our will, not to impose it. – Andy Stanley
Prayer is an offering of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with the confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies. – Westminster Shorter Catechism
All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent. – Teresa of Avila
Prayerful dependence on the grace of Jesus is our only refuge from our own sin. We cannot go into God’s presence unless we are dependent on Christ’s forgiveness and his righteousness before God, not on our own. -Timothy Keller in Prayer
Prayer is talking to God about what we are doing together. – Dallas Willard
We can pray because God is our loving Father, Jesus Christ is our mediator giving us access to the throne of the universe, and because the Spirit indwells us. – Timothy Keller in Prayer
Prayer is not about getting what we want – the fulfillment of our will; it is about learning what God wants – the bending of our will to God’s will. – Missional Church, Darrell Guder.
God is a person and, as such, must be encountered the same way as any other person- through time, conversation, and intimacy. It is one thing to meet a man once. It is something else to read his biography. But it is a whole new experience to know the man about whom others only read or speak. Prayer is the one avenue that makes this happen. – A. W. Tozer
Appearances mislead: prayer is never the first word; it is always the second word. God has the first word. Prayer is answering speech. – Eugene Peterson
Prayer is always and everywhere our cooperation with the movement of God’s Spirit already willing to help us, change us, and work through us. – Robert C. Morris
(All of the above quotes are from my Quote File.)
My mid-career years in the electronics industry were focused on getting projects done. Coworkers knew I was a Christian, but faith was not yet well integrated with my career. Eventually, I realized that when my industrial career ended it would matter more how I had represented Jesus at work than whether my projects succeeded. So, I decided to trust Jesus with the business outcomes and turn my focus to people.
The pivotal step was a change that occurred during my commute to work. I replaced the morning news and sports talk radio with prayer. After all, if I shared my commute with someone, I’d get to know them quite well. So why not invite Jesus to occupy the passenger seat?
I developed a stack of 3x5 prayer cards, each with scripture to guide a piece of that prayer. On a typical morning, I used 2-4 cards. The daytimer was open on the passenger seat (it was a little notebook in those days!), and I glanced at the scriptures at stoplights. I “prayed scripture” for each meeting on the agenda, the work projects, the people in those meetings, and their lives outside of work. In hindsight, the Lord used those daily prayer times to grow my interest in the people he’d put around me. And the projects? They went remarkably well - as good as, or better than, ever.
The result: the Lord opened many doors for spiritual conversations with coworkers as we talked about personal, marriage, family, financial, and career development issues. For some, these were the start of their journey to Christian faith.
My starting point was the scriptures on this list, hand-printed on 3x5 note cards:
1 Kings 18.36-37
1 Chronicles 29.10-13
1 Chronicles 4.9-10
1 Corinthians 15.57
1 John 4.4
1 Kings 18.36-37
2 Chronicles 14.11
2 Timothy 1.7
Colossians 3.17, 22-24 (2nd part applies to the Christian relating to his or her boss/company )
Colossians 1.9-10
Daniel 2.20-23
Ephesians 1.3
Ephesians 4.29
Exodus 33.13
Exodus 33.18
Lord's Prayer
Philippians 1.27-28
Philippians 1.6
Philippians 1.9-11
Philippians 2.3-4
Philippians 4.8
Psalms 107.1
Psalms 19
Psalms 51
Psalms 51.10
Psalms 63.3-4
My starting point was a gift from a friend of Kathleen Nielson’s book Prayers of a Parent - for Adult Children. My adaptation is a work in progress, but it’s far enough along that you may find it helpful in praying for your adult kids, meaning kids nearing high school graduation and beyond. I’m working through her book, reducing her two-page daily prayers to two-paragraph prayers short enough to recall throughout the day. The first paragraph of each prayer contains praise/thanks; the second contains requests. I sometimes use a snippet from these at meals or when walking/commuting between tasks. I write these prayers using pronouns that assume a married couple can pray for multiple kids. You can easily change the pronouns to fit your situation.
I'm 78 years old, so I define "my kids" very broadly, starting with my two biological kids and their partners. Then I add my third kid, a distributed set of people we support worldwide through charities. Since I'm seven years older than my only brother, I include him and his wife and their kids/partners/offspring. And I'm eleven years older than my wife's only brother, so I do the same for him and his family. Finally, I include those I've led to Christ or significantly mentored over many decades.
I divide this large number of kids into seven smaller groups and pray the same prayer each day for one of the groups. The following week, I do the same thing using the next prayer on the list. And so on.
In addition to praying these throughout the day, I usually also pray them overnight (see the next section below).
To access the document that holds these prayers, click Praying for Adult Kids doc.
Similar to what I described in the earlier section, "Pray your commute," I later began using my sleeping times for prayer. For example, I convert a piece of a psalm or other suitable scripture into a prayer just before turning out the light. For several years, I mostly selected the scripture from the Revised Common Lectionary readings. Sometimes, I pray for the Lord's clarification, teaching, or insight on some topic. I started this practice late enough in life when I awakened to visit the restroom a time or two in the night and used that as an opportunity to quickly refresh that scripture or prayer before returning to bed. I wasn't expecting much from the practice at first. But I soon discovered it offered (and still offers) a gold mine of insight and closeness with the Lord. I now use this time to pray for our adult "kids."
And there's a side-benefit: this practice helps me sleep much better than when the last thing I put my mind to before turning off the light was TV entertainment or news.
Occasionally, use a memorable phrase or sentence such as: "God is in control, despite all appearances to the contrary. This is what we believe; this is what we have seen; this is what we have to share with our world.” If you are a pastor, have the congregation say it with you. Teach it to them any way you can. The goal is to drill it into your mind so that it returns throughout the week. Make it a phrase you can thread through the rest of the service to the benediction. You can find more "swing thoughts" like this at Identity in Christ. Once there, especially look at the first section, which is labeled "Swing Thoughts."
This idea is from Mark Thibodeaux in Armchair Mystic: Easing Into Contemplative Prayer.
As a high school theology teacher, I often had my students pray silently for a few minutes and then tell me what happened in their prayer. One day, a sophomore said, “I didn’t pray because I couldn’t stop thinking about the big math test I’m taking this afternoon. I tried to stop thinking about it and to get back to God, but the harder I tried, the more it bothered me.”
Two points can be made about this: First, this boy’s fifteen-minute struggle to grow closer to God was prayer, a beautiful and self-sacrificial one. Second, maybe God kept bringing up the math test in his prayer! The boy could have used the distraction as the focal point of his prayer. He could have imagined himself simply placing that test on the altar of God and saying, “God, please bless my struggles with math and any other hard tasks I have to face today.”
Mark Thibodeaux's in Armchair Mystic: Easing Into Contemplative Prayer suggests praying some ready-made prayers from your childhood but adjusting them like this:
Choose a ready-made prayer. Pray it aloud slowly and reverently, as you might imagine cloistered monks pray.
Then pray it again, imagining all your past yous standing before God and praying it with you.
Then pray it a third time, imagining your future yous joining the motley crew.
Finally, pray it a fourth time, even more slowly, while you imagine all the yous merging together.
Allow yourself some time for this to settle in.
John Baillie's A Diary of Private Prayer includes 31 prayers for each day of the month. Write out a paraphrase of one of them and use it as a model. Pastors can hand out copies to the congregation so they can use it all week long. Here are links to the Baillie prayers that I have used in prayer-time teachable moments:
Saint Francis of Assisi prayer:
May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.
May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.
May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.
May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really can make a difference in this world so that you are able, with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.
John Wesley's Covenant Prayer
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt; rank me with whom thou wild.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full; let me be empty.
Let me have all things; let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen
Or use this prayer of St. John Chrysostom:
Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee, and dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in thy Name thou wilt be in the midst of them: Fulfill now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Amen
Here's one I wrote for graduates of high school and college:
Lord Jesus, we lift all high school and college graduates to you.
Please, help them recognize and reject lies.
Help them recognize and reject evil.
Help them recognize and reject ugliness.
Instead, help them live lives of truthfulness, goodness, and beauty.
We know you can do this because you embody all that is true, good, and beautiful.
(Obviously, it is easy to modify this prayer for other people, groups, or even individuals.)
Here's a Thanksgiving prayer from Sarah Anderson’s book “The Space Between Us”
For family near and peaceable, Lord, we give thanks.
For families far and conflicted, Lord, we give thanks.
For the ones easy to love, Lord, we give thanks.
For the ones we fight to love, Lord, we give thanks.
For people who see as we see, Lord, we give thanks.
For people we don’t understand, Lord, we give thanks.
For people who don’t understand us, Lord, we give thanks.
For easy conversation and expressed affection, Lord, we give thanks.
For gentle discord within our discourse, Lord, we give thanks.
For unity, not sameness, Lord, we give thanks.
For charity in all things, Lord, we give thanks.
For a world that reflects your goodness, Lord, we give thanks.
For humankind that bears your image, Lord, we give thanks.
For a day when we’ll delight in our differences and not just tolerate them,
For a gathering of every tribe and every language,
For a table and a feast today, anticipating the one we’ll enjoy with you someday, Lord, we give thanks. Amen.
Use the BLESS acronym to pray for people (or teach your congregation to do this). For B, pray for the physical needs of the person's body. For L, pray for their labor (work, schoolwork, housework). For E, pray for their emotional life. For the first S, pray for their social interactions with friends, relatives, associates, and neighbors. And for the last S, ask God to bless them spiritually.
This acronym provides a model for prayer for many people. The steps are Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication, and Submission. You can find more about this at Learning to Pray.
Notice that the Lord’s Prayer begins with adoration and then asks for daily bread. It’s not that God is insecure and needs our praise. We need to praise God to:
Keep us grounded in the ultimate reality of who God is.
Provide a place or rest from our worldly cares.
Complete our own joy.
Keep us humble
C.S. Lewis noticed that the humblest and, at the same time, the most balanced minds praise the most; cranks, misfits, and malcontents praise the least. For example, good critics find something to praise in many imperfect books; bad critics continually narrow the books we are approved to read. Praise seems to be inner health made audible.
At the end of most days, just before going to sleep, a friend of mine jots down three praises or thanks to God for that day. Picking up on his lead, I am curating a list of praises to keep my prayers fresh. You can find it by typing bit.ly/praisinggod into any browser.
Practicing praise changes us for the better. So let’s spend a little time praising God at the beginning of our times of prayer.
(Concepts from Timothy Keller’s Prayer - Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, chapter 12, “The Alpha Prayer.”)
This 2nd Commandment mini teaching helps us move the focus of prayer from the standard listing of needs to the living Jesus, as opposed to the many idols around us.
The pastoral prayer is the only time in the week when some parishioners quiet their hearts and pray. Others pray regularly but will appreciate some tips on how to move beyond a dry routine of praying lists at God. You can use your pastoral prayer time to teach and model any of the ideas on this web page (those above and those below). This simple worship element of inserting a Prayer-Time Teachable Moment will enrich parishioners' prayer lives throughout the week.
I'm not suggesting that you package a mini-sermon on prayer into the worship flow every week. Just use 2 minutes before the congregational prayer to teach a fresh way to pray and then immediately model it with the congregation. This requires about 15 minutes of preparation, most of it in a quiet, reflective prayer, asking God for direction. You can count on God to show up when you do this. It invariably leads to vibrant prayer time. I'm sure God looks forward to these prayer times with his people, too.
So ask your worship leader to include a quiet song that leads into prayer time; it needs to be a song with a strategic "interrupt opportunity" for your teachable moment. After the teaching, invite people to join you at the altar while a musical reprise continues. In my case, I always kneel along with the parishioners. More people will respond than you expect. If children are present and you extend an invitation to them before the service, they will likely engulf you. This simple practice, kneeling at the altar when you offer the pastoral prayer transforms worship into a precious time that people look forward to every week.
Occasionally design an interlude in the middle of the prayer and invite people to speak out (just the) name of someone needing prayer. One week your theme might be for physical healing. Other times it could be psychological healing, employment, salvation, courage, wisdom, a hunger for holiness, and so on. Use the teachable moment to tip people off that this opportunity is coming, and they'll be ready. The first time I did this I hoped a couple of people would speak out a name. But in a congregation of about 100 people there must have been ten names spoken by ten different people. If you think your group needs still more encouragement, recruit some board members to model this open-altar prayer time. This practice is worth using often.
Do the same thing but this time, invite people to speak out one-sentence praises/thanks, using scripture (or not). Again, use the teachable moment to tip the congregation off that this opportunity will come early in the prayer time. Then when it’s time for the interlude, without leaving the prayer time, just invite the people to speak out their sentence. Then be quiet for long enough for them to respond. Wait in silence for at least fifteen seconds. Worship needs more silence. You'll be surprised how people will respond, and you will feel God's affirmation.
Find a way to pray the announcements. If they are not worth praying, perhaps they're not worth announcing.
Try a Quaker prayer time: Presume that God longs to spend time with us when we just quiet down and listen. Project a pertinent scripture on the screen or print it in the worship folder, play soft background music, invite people to the altar and go there yourself. Then just read the scripture and let the next 3-5 minutes be quiet prayer time with background music playing. Close by re-reading the same or another scripture, and then say "Amen."
Choose a parishioner to share what is on their agenda for the week, and one or two items that are in their current prayers. If the parishioner's family is present, introduce them to the congregation. Encourage the congregation to pray for this person's requests throughout the next week. Then invite people to the altar and include a prayer for this person's request in your pastoral prayer. A week or two later ask the parishioner to report. This also helps parishioners know each other at a deeper level and to know how to pray for each other.
Do a mini-teaching about the Powers of Darkness and center the prayer time in response to this. Ask God to strengthen the church and its parishioners against the Powers of Darkness, for the Good News of Jesus Christ to penetrate the powers and to push them back. Spend as much time asking the Lord to give people courage and strength to live as citizens of God’s Kingdom as you spend asking God to relieve the church or its members of some problem.
Check out this link to find some good Benedictions.
Blessings,
Tim
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