#ReimaginePRAYER...By Getting Unstuck

[Reimagine Curator]

#ReimaginePRAYER...By Getting Unstuck

After I took a break from prayer for a few years, when I started praying again, around age 40, I knew, from my third grade teacher, about the ACTS acronym: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication.

But I didn’t really have any sense that there were different types of prayer that might be needed in different circumstances.

I am starting to get a better handle on this now.

For example, when Bob Perry and I are leading a prayer call, we have a specific format we follow: after a prayer of blessing and welcome over the call, we open with praise and thanksgiving, then we shift into prayer, and then we close with a blessing over the participants.

We recognize that scripture tells us to “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.”

But when we pray for Workplace Prayer, we begin with the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer of Jabez (which Bob has been praying daily for 41 years now!), then a prayer of protection and cutting-free prayer. We often read a Psalm and take communion at some point. We have praise and prayer, both corporate and specific. But each day is a bit different—theme and variation.

Then in my day-to-day life, as I'm praying individually, I don't come to God with a sense of a need for specific format.

When I’m in the lower pasture, I walk and talk to God and ask questions and sit in silence. My time there looks free-form and relational.

It would be unhealthy for my relationship with my husband Phil if I felt like every time I talked to him, I needed to run through a checklist:

• Have I said hello?

• Asked how his day is going?

• Complimented him?

• Gauged his mood?

That would be over-the-top analysis to simply ask him the time of his appointment tomorrow.

This is casual life.

But not all of life is casual. A wedding has a specific form. Taking communion also usually has a form.

Which is all to say: it’s okay to learn about different forms of prayer for different situations.

Different parts of a relationship require a difference in formality and structure.

I would be delighted to know your thoughts on this.

Add to the conversation on the anonymous questionnaire here: https://forms.gle/XiCLLdzrkaBcNpsN9

The Lord has given me this authority, not to pull down but to build up,

Amy Joy

 

P.S. Also … we are halfway through Prayer Mentoring, and I had a question: is it too late to join?

It’s not too late! We are six weeks in, but we have all six call recordings and the Zoom available. If you listen at double speed, that would only be two hours total.

I have loaded all the Prayer Mentoring emails into the system, so if you sign up, you’ll get an email every hour for about 15 hours, until you’ll be caught up. (I don’t have the option to send them every minute, or Immediately … but imagine! A gift in your inbox every hour all day!)

Call #7 is tomorrow!

 

Learn more on the landing page here, with the basic details: https://praybig.me/mentoring2024​

Or join us here: https://actintl.givingfuel.com/prayer-mentoring​

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| Makarios / P.O. Box 28, Esmont, VA 22937