Strategic Prayer
Strategic Prayer: Embracing God's Great Purposes
One of our guiding principles as Grace Bible Church is "Praying Always". And we are a praying church. We pray for our friends, our neighbors, the lost nearby and far away, the hurting, our leaders, and people we want to love and serve. Some of our members spend lots of time praying over our community, others are just learning to make prayer part of their lifestyle.
In the 2009-2011 Strategic Plan, the staff and elders identified 10 ways we can do multigenerational ministry better. (Like a copy? You can download it here.) The first, and perhaps the most important part of this plan was to help us grow in our prayer lives, and to devote time to strategic prayer.
When we hear a life long prayer warrior like Dr. Paul Toms lead us in prayer, we realize that there are aspects to our prayer lives that we sometimes neglect. Dr. Paul doesn't just remember our sick friends and family needs, though he does that well. He crys out to God to fulfill His great purposes in our community, our nation, and our families. In his prayers we hear verse after verse and theme after theme from God's word. Paul helps us to remember that we should not only pray "for our daily bread" but to give priority to God's priorities: "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
You will sometime hear this kind of big picture praying refered to as Kingdom Prayer, or Strategic Prayer. We want to grow people of prayer in our congregation, men and women who are intimately aquainted with God's great purposes, who regularly pray whole passages of Scripture over our congregation, and who cry out to God to do his mighty work here among us.
What does Strategic Prayer look like as we pray for our multi-generational church? It means that we not only pray for specific issues families are facing, we pray for God's vision for healthy, wise, tight, loving families to unfold right here in our midst. We don't just shoot up a prayer for our team plan, we seek God's heart and guidance through the Word and the Spirit. We pray for forgiveness to mark our marriages, holiness to mark our lifestyles, deeds of love and compassion to mark our friendships. We hold up God's word before Him in prayer, agreeing in our hearts together that His way for us is best.
Watch for more reminders to practice Strategic Prayer in our small groups, prayer chain email, and Adult Bible Fellowships. Pray for the little things, pray for ministry goals and plans, and pray for the big things on God's heart. Let's be like the disciples, who came to Jesus and pleaded with him, "Lord, teach us to pray!"
