Matthew 26:40: A recipe for an hour of small group prayer

Challenge your groups to pray for an hour together sometime this summer. Spend ten minutes praying about each of the six topics below.


Praise and adoration to your Creator
Begin your hour of prayer by praising God for his holiness and purity, which he freely shares with you through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Thank him for his goodness and desire to bless you. Praise him for his patience and loyalty, even when you don’t deserve it. Give him honor for the gifts and talents you posses, and be specific! Thank him for protecting you in ways you know about and those you will not know of until you meet him in glory. Finally, thank him for the privilege of being his representative in this dark and hurting world.

Pray for our federal government and its officials
As you pray for the U.S. Congress, Federal Court Judges, the President, and his cabinet, and other government officials, ask God to pour out his Spirit on each person or position. Use this time to intercede on their behalf, asking God to protect them, their families, and their relationships. Refrain from complaining to God about their positions on specific issues or party affiliation.

Pray for our city and your neighborhood
Take a few minutes to thank the Lord for this town and the things you love about living here. Praise him for the opportunity to be a positive influence on the many who live around us. Then, ask for a fresh understanding of how you can make a difference with your time, energy, and talents to make the people of our town feel loved and appreciated. Use the balance of your time to cry out to God for the unchurched in our town, asking him to give you a great awareness of their needs so you can respond in love. Pray for safety in the schools in your area and the children that are taught there each day. Ask the Lord to bring to mind the businesses in your area and ask him to prosper each one. Then, pray for your neighbors by name, asking God for open doors to deepen relationships with them and serve them.

Pray for our church, the staff members, and their families
Pray for protection for your church. We’re working hard to reach people for Christ and Satan is never happy about that. Ask God to protect the members, family units, small groups, and leadership. Take your time and think through each family, group, and lay leader and lift them up by name. We also need pray for the missional direction of the church as it moves forward, increasing relationships with one another, the Lord, and unchurched families in our community. Pray for each staff member by name and ask God to give them encouragement and joy in their work, peace in their families and homes, and wisdom as they serve God and the congregation. (Add the names of your church’s staff members here.)

Pray for yourself
Petition God to be the kind of fellow small group member, friend, husband, wife, son, daughter, mother, father, ex-husband, or ex-wife that he would want you to be: slow to anger, quick to praise, full of wisdom, and to become a person of greater patience and grace. Thank God for each person in your small group and family by name, highlighting one or two ways you see God shining through them, including skills, abilities, and talents. Then petition God to be the kind of supervisor, employee, co-worker, or student that is a ray of hope, refreshment, and encouragement to those around you. If you are willing to be specific in this area when you pray, you'll run out of time!

Pray for the lost
Pray for deeper connections with unchurched friends, relatives, co-workers, fellow students, and neighbors. Thank the Lord for each person by name, highlighting one thing you love about that person. Then ask God for boldness with those you just prayed for and a new or stronger desire to tell them how Christ is working in you. (If you don’t have any unchurched people in your life, use this time to ask God to show you the people on the landscape who are desperately looking for a friend like you.)

Tips for an hour of prayer as a group:

• Invite everyone to drop to their knees and face the outside of a circle of chairs.
• Invite everyone to pray aloud and ignore everyone else around them. This way, everyone gets to pray for a whole hour instead of listening to the bold people pray while the timid ones remain silent.
• Start praying on time and end on time.
• After the hour, ask your group what God spoke to them during the hour.

2 comments:

Rolly Christian said...

Howdy,

Welcome back.

Small Groups can be powerful because it should be putting legs on your faith. At the moment our church is still traditional in its approach to homegroups etc. They cover prayer and Bible study ok.

The Lord is SO much bigger than this.

We would have to know more scripture than many of the original disciples and have sat through more messages to boot (Not Jesus' messages granted) and yet our "faith" is somehow comfortably limited to a study (if your persistent) and Sunday service.

Sorry its not even luke-warm.

Unknown said...

This is a useful 'recipe', thank you. I particularly like your idea of having everyone pray simultaneously.