This Sunday in our Abide series, we discussed prayer as a means of abiding in and enjoying God as our Father. Prayer often seems like an easy thing to neglect. Because it takes a bit of concentration and effort, we tend to slack in it when we feel like we're failing to do it well. And since prayer is something most everyone struggles to thrive in, we wanted to provide an on-ramp to help.
The Challenge
For the next 28 days, beginning yesterday and ending on Father's Day, we're going to spend five minutes a day in prayer as a church family. All of us can spare five minutes. And if not, surely we all do five minutes worth of something that could be skipped and have no significant impact on us or our families.
You might be thinking I spend way more time than that in prayer every day already! And our response would be to keep it up! But others of us may need a jumpstart.
So we're encouraging each person in our family to spend five minutes in prayer–for anything. And our hope is that God will use these five minutes to grow us in our love for Him and each other.
Most of us have tons we could think of to pray for in five minutes, but just in case you need some help:
- You. Your love for Jesus, your spiritual health, your physical health.
- Your family. Their love for Jesus, their salvation, their anxieties, their struggles.
- Your LifeGroup. Their love for Jesus, people you're building relationships with, people joining you for your rhythms.
- Our church family as a whole. That we'd be an accurate representation of Jesus in our city and in our world. For strength and courage, hope in the midst of suffering, our relationships with others and with Jesus.
- Our city. That people in Columbia would place their hope in Jesus.
- Our world. That we would be a part of seeing God's kingdom come in power all over the planet.