Thanks for meeting us at the prayer circle.
Praying on the foundation of Scripture is the key to ensuring our prayers are in the place of power. In our previous session, it was said that this helps us pray in God’s own language. Doesn’t that encourage us that we will be heard?
Learn more about the benefits of praying with Scripture in this week’s Prayer Circle.
My pastor recently asked me to consider rekindling the Wednesday night children’s ministry in our church as well as an outreach to unchurched families in our town. After some praying, I felt the Lord wanted me to serve in this way.
We began the trellis work of gathering volunteers, developing curriculum, and organizing. It was soon time to have our first training and planning session.
Because of what I believe so strongly about Christ building His church, we started and hopefully will continue, as a prayer meeting in motion: that is to let active praying carry the active service. I voiced my heart to the volunteers that I wanted them to be fulfilled through their praying together as a team and then witnessing God at work.
For starters, I chose some signature passages of Scripture which I felt were clear and would build a framework for our thinking and service. Then, I asked my secretary to print them out on one sheet of paper and make copies for everybody. When we gathered, we read the passages one at a time, interacted with insights that were outstanding, and then we prayed those truths back to God in His own words, moving back and forth across the room with short sentences in conversational fashion. We observed together, responded together, agreed together, and believed together.
It was delightful. We were on sure footing, we shared hope, we put our expectation in objective truth, and we were refreshed. Then, we moved to the next passage.
Such praying is so easy and to the point. No one was praying long, exhausting prayers of repetition. We weren’t praying clichés nor gossiping in prayer or making up stories about what God or others might think. I encouraged them to begin each sentence with “Thank you,” and we finished ready to “birth a plan” instead of “plan a birth.” We did the same in our second meeting with a different set of Scriptures.
When we pray on the foundation of objective truth, three things happen:
We rescue prayer from being only a monologue of human thoughts. Opinion praying is a killer to corporate prayer.
We participate with God in His stated Word. We are not just imitators of a religious practice.
We can be transformed in the place of prayer. The observed, agreed upon truths of the Scripture are picked up by the Holy Spirit and used to convict, encourage, and transform every- one sincerely involved. Silently, in the joint agreement of Scripture praying, believers are miraculously being transformed by the renewing of their mind. It’s like meditation on a corporate level. As I have practiced this, I have heard a brother or sister pray something and internally I would be thinking, “Wow, I’ve never seen it that way before. Yes, Lord, I agree with that.”
Here’s how the apostle Paul explains it. “But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord,” (II Corinthians 3:18). In his own words, Dr. Warren Wiersbe says, “When the child of God looks into the Word of God and sees the Son of God, he is changed by the Spirit of God into the image of God for the glory of God.”
For our ministries to be transformed, our praying must be transforming. Here’s my definition of transforming, gospel praying.
Transforming, gospel prayer is when believers pray God’s truth into their lives—agreeing together with humble, repentant hearts.
Again, the idea of corporate, Scriptural praying requires some shepherding, but the long-range positive effects on our families and ministries will be observable and enjoyable. We don’t need to settle for prayer meetings that are a drag. We can open our Bibles in exultation and enjoy our God together.
Joe Humrichous is the executive director of Paradigm One and Bible Prayer Fellowship. The message of the sufficiency of Christ for both the pastor and the local church was birthed during a time of brokenness in his early ministry. Now after 50 years in ministry, Joe is passionate to share this reality as it applies to corporate prayer and church leadership. He recently served as a pastor at First Baptist Church in Covington, Indiana. He and his wife Teresa have 5 children and 13 grandchildren.
