How to Strengthen Your Prayer Life

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Colin Smith
Brothers, it really is a joy to have the opportunity of some conversation together. And I’ve been given the privilege of asking you all the questions. So you have to give all the answers. And looking forward to this opportunity. And to try and keep this as as practical as possible. That theme has run really, throughout our conference already and will continue this morning. And in my mind, there are really three broad spheres for the next 45 minutes or so, for us to talk a little bit about prayer in our own lives. What is that like for you? Little bit about prayer in regards to the church and in regards to ministry public worship corporate Prayer gatherings, small groups, so forth and so on perhaps a little bit about prayer in the family, in relation to children, and then perhaps at the end any resources, that would be helpful for folks to, to read by way of follow up. So just to frame the question about personal prayer first, one of the things I’ve done over the years and found quite useful, is to have some envelopes that are just discussion starters, for pastoral conversations of a meeting with someone for no particular reason. And I’ll say, you know, we have an hour together, and we can talk about anything you want. Or if there’s nothing particularly on your mind, I’ve got some suggestions here. And, and there’s an issue or a question on each envelope, and one of them is, how would you describe your prayer life. And in each envelope, there are some cards. And what I’ve found again and again, is that if I give people you know, six, seven options of something to talk about, the number one choice is always I’d like to talk about my prayer life. And then people take out these cards, and they put them on the table. And there’s one word on each card, and it would be like, you know, fruitful, faith filled, hard work. And people sort out the words and the two words that overwhelmingly I found people sort out are irregular, and aimless. And so I’ve had many conversations with folks who love the Lord, but feel that their prayer lives are irregular and aimless. What have you found in pastoral conversation with people? That that helps folks to grow in their prayer life, which is really the theme at the very heart of our, our time together over these two days? Why don’t you start off?

Juan Sanchez
Sure, we’re not talking about our prayer life, but how how it has helped others. There are three words that I’ve learned to use repeatedly in that time, place, and plan. And one of the ways that I find most helpful and this is for me, maybe others, you know, maybe it’s not as helpful to others, but I just try to hammer home, you know, you have to have a time, a plan and a place. Because if we don’t have a plan, even a prayer plan, it does become aimless, right. We don’t know what to say, we don’t know how to pray. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate plan. It can be a simple plan, but also a time. There’s a little book, I don’t remember who who wrote it. It’s, it’s not a Christian book. It’s called daily rituals. And it’s a book about daily rituals of artists, writers, composers, painters, and one of the themes that comes out of there as every creative person, they still have a plan, they have a structure, they have a daily ritual. And it’s like the writer who sits at that desk with that cup of coffee at that time, your brain says okay, this is writing time. So, you know, just establishing a time gives you regularity, it gives you a goal again, you know, you may not have be able to do that all the time. But for me in the way that God made me when I have a time that this is what I do at this time, a place I sit down at a you know, place in my house with my cup of coffee, and then I have a plan that helps me to be productive. And

Colin Smith
just a couple of sentences on the plan. What would a plan look like?

Juan Sanchez
Sure. This is something I learned as a young, young Christian, and it was given to me by a friend of mine Monday, I pray for missionaries Tuesday, I pray for tasks that I have before me. Wednesday I pray for workers in the kingdom. So that’s when I pray for our elders and our deacons and our staff. Thursday, I pray for the ministries in the church Friday I pray for family and friends Saturday I pray for sinners Sunday I pray for services, and they just kind of gives me a structure. That’s not all I pray for. And then on my Evernote, I have daily prayer lists that are related to that. And and then I pray a page a day through our church directory for the members something I learned from from Mark Devere. And so just knowing that I don’t go into prayer overwhelmed, I know where we’re, I know where I’m going. And then as this is the Spirit leads me to pray for other things as well. Yes.

Colin Smith
Marvelous. Kevin, you want to jump in?

Kevin DeYoung
All of us on the stage included, would say our prayer life at times is irregular and aimless. I would certainly say that about myself. So the people in our churches who feel that are are in good company or we’re in good company. Everything wants it is really helpful and important. I’ll just add to it to say a plan is so important because think about it if if anything, so if you’re trying to pray for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, half hour even five minutes. How many of us about anything would just hit the alarm, get a cup of coffee, roll out of bed? Go talk meaningfully about something for 15 minutes. Go. No, you wouldn’t do it, you would have some sort of plan and to have a prayer card, I have something similar with certain days of the week, pray through things. And then I would allow yourself to have this was a book I read years ago, probably lesser known by David Hanson. I don’t even know where he is in ministry now, but it was called Long wandering prayer. And he allows for and I think wisely that sometimes prayer is aimless. And you can think of it as the the daily, I’m organized. I’m getting a prayer card, a prayer list. That’s important. And I think it’s also important in okay to have times that are sort of aimless. Here’s my, here’s my scriptural warrant for that. It’s a different message. But Psalm 55 begins, David by saying my prayer to you, oh, God, so it’s a prayer. And if you read through Psalm 55, it is a meandering prayer. At times, he’s speaking as we would think of as prayer to you, oh, god this way. Other times, he’s speaking to himself, he’s telling him things, then he goes, and he speaks in third person. And then he’s thinking about this man who is his enemy, and he’s sort of directing him, it is really offering up the burdens and conversation of his heart, in a God word direction. If that’s all you do, then you’re probably missing something. But to allow for those times where prayer seems aimless, seems wandering, I think is is okay. And there’s some scriptural warrant, that prayer is lifting our conversation in our hearts, God word. And very practically, I don’t know if you mentioned this in your list of things to do. But walking, walking has been a huge benefit for me very practically, almost every morning, when I’m praying, if it’s dark out, maybe walked on the treadmill in our house, or whenever I can’t go outside, because I don’t live up here anymore. And so it’s warm sometimes during the year, and I can get out, because I get sleepy. I sit down, I try to pray, I get sleepy. And if I go on a walk, and I go 15 minutes out, 15 minutes back, even if my mind is scattered here and there. I have a half hour and it’s much harder to fall asleep when you’re walking. And there’s all sorts of scientific studies about you know, they’ve done the brain scans and what starts firing and parts of your brain that light up when you’re when you’re doing physical movement. So that very simple realization that it still counts as prayer, even if I’m moving has been really helpful.

Colin Smith
That’s really good. HP what else would you like to add either for helping others or what has helped you?

H. B. Charles
Yeah, I would, amen. Everything that has already been said. I would add one note practically and then say something spiritual. I don’t mean that’s the only word I could think of. But practically, what I have found helpful time place plan, totally agree with I would add to that just helps. reading scripture along with prayer, yes. Stars us up for prayer. My hymnal I keep a hymnal is probably a key tool of mine for prayer. And then I am always reading through some devotional because there are times just to get in a spirit of mine for prayer, I need my thoughts stirred up for the bigness of God. I would say during the early part of COVID, it just weighed on me and there were matters. I just I was go I had a broken heart. And just I knew I needed to pray. Well, two things helped me through there. I was writing my prayers out with something practical. And then connected to that though, just the mornings. I was just read a couple of those prayers. Thought of value vision. And it was just helping me to lift my thoughts beyond where our where I was. So I think helps. And I’m sure there are others that can be mentioned beyond those spiritually. What I want to say is, in the conversations I have, I have a lot of conversations about things we are discussing. But many times I think believers struggle more than my conversations with the motivation to pray. They, when we are going through something, our instinct is to do something, and we don’t think prayer is doing something. And we are tempted to neglect prayer. And what I have, what I have learned out of my study in the scriptures, is that the Bible says more about the motivation for prayer than it does the techniques of prayer. It’s not a lot of discussion about methodologies, techniques, patterns. It is a lot said about the motivation to pray. And so I tried to remind my own heart I tried to share with others, you know, and there just, I think, three biblical primary motivations for prayer, number one, it is an act of obedience. There are commands after command after command to pray. And to the degree that I desire to be obedient to God submissive to His Word, it is a motivation to end beyond anything else. Obedience is its own reward. Secondly, the Bible motivates us to pray by telling us over and over again, hold on to you see, it works. It is amazing that with commands to pray, there are so many commands to pray that are directly attached to a promise. And a lot of times, you can read books, or hear sermons on prayers, or even come to an event in prayer. And you just feel so beaten down about how weak your prayer life is. And that really isn’t the tone of Scripture. This tone of Scripture is motivating us to pray wooing us to pray, compelling us to pray with wonderful promises of what God will do if you call on him. The third thing I would say, and I mentioned it last night, is that prayer advertises our dependence upon God. Prayer is a declaration of dependence. And I think that’s the I don’t mean to minimize what we are doing. But I think that’s the key to prayer, the key in one sentence, the key to effective prayer is a heart of dependence. My willingness, my my diligence, my devotion to prayer, exposes who or what I truly depend on. And there are times when we will not feel like praying, there are times when prayer is hard. It is a struggle. We press through during those times as a declaration that I am trusting God in the midst of this not something or someone else. So along with the practical things, I just think it is important to keep before ourselves and keep before others biblical motivations for believing prayer.

Colin Smith
Thank you. This is Rich stuff, and very, very practical and very helpful. HB light like you my pastor said to me years ago, always pray with an open Bible, that one sentence have been so helpful, because it fuels confession of sin, you spot things that you say, that’s something I need to put, right. That’s something that needs to be addressed. It fuels intercession. That’s something I can pray for someone else. It feels Thanksgiving. So it just brings a freshness to prayer. It gives you something to pray out of that in its very nature, it’s going to be different each day. Let’s talk a little bit about prayer in regards to the ministry of the local church. And I got three aspects in mind. Maybe each of you could just pick one and comment on. One is public prayer and worship. It strikes me that that is in decline in many churches. It strikes me that it’s very important in the scriptures that it’s part of public worship. Maybe someone could comment on that. What about small groups? How do you encourage meaningful prayer in the context of small groups? And what about prayer gatherings gathering simply for prayer? So, you know, pick one or more than one, and perhaps we can comment on these aspects of prayer in the life of the church.

Kevin DeYoung
And to start with the first one in corporate worship, I totally agree, I think you would go to many churches, trust not the churches represented here, but you’d go to many churches, and prayer would be barely more than a an opportunity for the band members to transition off the stage. That’s right. Yep. And for the pastor to come up on the stage, you say, Hello, you maybe have the glad handing of the peace. And you have an opening worship set, a little transitional prayer. The Lord is praised in those words, as people get saved in those services. It is impoverished, and it is not building upon our forefathers in the faith who have thought a lot about whether you go all the way. I mean, we have a fairly traditional, I would like to say historic, robust, Presbyterian, reformed liturgy for our worship service. But we have a prayer of invocation, which is so you have a call to worship. That’s God calling us to worship and in prayer invocation to invoke ask God, then we’re speaking to him. People want dialogue, in worship. And what they sometimes mean is we want to be talking back and forth. Can we ask questions, the dialogue is, is vertical. And the the traditional Protestant worship service had that built in God’s calling us we’re responding. So we have a prayer of adoration, we have a prayer of invocation, we have almost every Sunday we have a prayer of confession of sin, and then assurance of pardon. And we have a long pastoral prayer, I tell our guys not to make it too long. So it’s, you know, five, six minutes, sometimes seven, and a prayer, illumination before the message prayer after it. So there are almost every Sunday, there are five or six different prayers and from time to time, we will take a moment to try to teach the congregation that those are actually different kinds of prayers trying to serve different elements in the worship service. And it can feel like, oh, man, we just close your eyes. But there’s a real rich rhythm to it. And in particular, just since you asked if your church doesn’t have, especially if you’re in charge of making this happen, don’t go just back and start complaining. But if you don’t have that long, whatever you call an intercessory, prayer, pastoral prayer, where you’re praying for the the needs of the congregation. That is such a rich way to not only pray for those things, but to model for your congregation. I remember one time, years ago, a member of the congregation said, you know, when I first came to this church, and you had all these prayers, and you had that long prayer, and I have to tell you, I would get sleepy and it was kind of boring. You pray for five, six minutes. I didn’t know why you had it. And I can see now five years later, part of what you were doing was trying to teach us how to pray, trying to model the things yes to pray for. So very few of our Evangelical, even good Bible believing evangelical churches are too steeped in prayer, and we’ve lost something. HP.

H. B. Charles
Yeah, I will quickly make two points, if I may. I think critical is the prayer and public worship. I was recently at a sound conservative church event. And it was just afterward they they reminded me, maybe up to five times before I spoke. Make sure you pray at the end of this message. And make sure you pray long enough to give the orchestra time to make it back to you Oh, and ah, the only bad thing about that is that it’s not rare. It’s just not rare. Kevin is right. A lot of places two things I see neglected. In my own travels. I sit in services and I don’t see the public reading of Scripture. First Timothy 413. And then our worship services each week, we are reading through a chapter of the Bible consecutively through books and it freaks people out. And I just My only response is if you can’t read the Bible in church, where can you read? The other thing is just prayer. I have been saying to our congregation. It it should not take a guest to come to a secondary meeting a prayer meeting A small group or something else, to know that this is a house of prayer? Yeah, that’s good. It ought to be evident. In our Sunday morning assemblies of corporate worship, I would say central to that is the pastoral prayer. And if I may say, this is how I cheat. Because there’s a lot of things that go on in our nation in our culture in our city, that my members get really upset about that I don’t have a statement of what what mitigates that always I pray about everything. And I am going to cover those matters in prayer. And I think praying about it is better than talking about it. And I am modeling I am trying to model for the church in that pastoral prayer, how to think and how to prayerfully respond to those things. I think so I think I think a great revival would begin, if we just took, I believe in prayer meeting, that was the other thing I want to say I’ll just skip that part. But I would just say if churches just took prayer more seriously, in the corporate worship services, that could really be a spark of revival. And I think that starts with those of us who are pastors, taking the pastoral prayer more seriously. Pat Quinn, our elders a few months ago, re praying in public. And it just sparked a lot of conversations about us being more intentional about our public and pastoral prayers. I think, if that is central, it’ll take you a long way and taking steps forward.

Juan Sanchez
Really good. Yeah, I would echo the importance of corporate prayer in the worship gathering. And if you don’t know where to begin, I would begin with the pastoral prayer. Just think through the different categories that you can be praying and modeling for the congregation. But we also have a Sunday evening, prayer gathering on the second and fourth Sunday nights. And that’s just a time where we’re praying for things in the church, it’s kind of a family time, we will, we will interview. Young couples that are getting married, will interview young parents who just had a baby will pray for very specific things in the life of the church, we’ll pray the Word. So from the sermon will take some application prayers and, and pray those for us for the congregation. And then for for missionaries, gospel partners, those kinds of things. And that’s just a regular time it it becomes a very sweet time for us. In in that it’s like the family coming together. We’ll we’ll do different things sometimes. Like this last time, I gave everyone just a few minutes to break up into pairs, to pray for one another to share requests to one another and then pray. But often, we have ordered the prayer requests, thinking through them and then assigning people, you know, would you pray for this? Would you pray for this? And then we just spend time praying.

Colin Smith
That’s good. First Timothy, chapter two, I think very obviously, would be a primary passage of scripture that really mandates a prayer as part of, of public worship. And really, really helpful to speak about it. It strikes me that we need to work at the preparation of this. It’s very striking to me that, you know, in order to speak from God to people, we put in 20 hours preparation to a sermon perhaps. Well, what preparation goes in to the opposite, which is speaking on behalf of people to God, there needs to be some preparation for that. I have to say one of the things that I am most thankful for here in the orchard is is the place of intercessory prayer in public worship, as part of the training we do. All of our pastors work really well in terms of preparation to pray in that regard. Just just a resource that might be helpful to people. I think probably the classic work on this is a book by Samuel Miller. That is entitled, here’s another brilliant title. We were talking about titles last night. Thoughts on public prayer that was before they had marketing people to come up with a snappy title but but the good news is, rather than reading a book for many years To go ligand Duncan has condensed Samuel Miller’s material into an article that you can find on the nine marks website. It is called to you just Google. There’s 32 principles for public prayer. And there are 18 do’s and 14 don’ts. And they’re really perceptive and helpful. And Lake has updated this. And so just as a resource, because in cultivating this in the life of the church, you want to be trying to help and encourage those who will be leading in prayer and some do’s and don’ts will be stimulating. So again, that is 32 principles for public prayer ligand Duncan has condensed down that material from Samuel Miller, and you’ll find it on the nine Mark’s website. Anything more on prayer meetings, gatherings for prayer? One, you got us going a little bit on that your brother’s want to add anything to that? How do you do that? And how does it work? What’s the dynamic of these meetings?

Kevin DeYoung
Again, preparation is key to lead a good prayer meeting. And we’ve all been to prayer meetings that are called the prayer meeting. And it’s not a prayer meeting, it’s the pastor supposed to give a 20 minute message. And then you take prayer requests, and everyone gets that takes 20 minutes, and then someone prays for five minutes. And that’s not bad to do that. And the Lord hears those. But to plan to pray. Again, if you just start with your people and say, Let’s go pray for an hour. That’s really daunting for for most of us. But it’s amazing how some planning can make an hour or start as a half hour. go really quickly. So when I came to the church, I served now five years ago, they have a weekly staff prayer meeting, and it was more like the pastor gives a 25 minute meditation devotional, and then you break up into tables. So I just changed it and said, We’re going to model leading a time of 30 or 35 minutes in prayer. And now we have a separate evening service. So we will take some of our evening services throughout the year to just pray for an hour. And what I mean by preparation is have an hour planned out to lead your people that includes now we’re going to sing this hymn. And it’s a hymn that’s directing us in prayer. And then I have two people lined up, I have two of the other elders and they’re going to come and I’ve asked them to pray two minutes each for a specific topic. And then we’re going to go into large group where people just shout out a sentence prayer, tell your people, I’m always saying this, pray short prayers in the prayer meeting. Most of us are boring when we try to pray longer. So that’s one, two, when someone goes and does a four minute soliloquy, it sends the message to everyone else, I can’t really pray unless I can do this at up for a long clip. So I tell people, I almost mandate, you have two sentences, say something in two sentences. It just allows lots of other people kids start saying something because they can give Thank you, God for loving us and sending your son to die in the cross. So tell people to pray short when you do those, those large group prayers. And then we’ll have a time and small group prayer and you give them just constantly giving them prompts. So and you’re leading people from upfront and I saw this model very well from Ben Patterson, who was my Chaplain when I went to college, and he’s also commend his book, so you can just look him up wherever you buy books. Ben Patterson has a lot of really good books on prayer. And I saw him lead this well, very directive. So sort of having a sense for the room. It’s getting quiet, and then he would pray. Okay, now in your small groups, let’s pray for our pastors. And that goes for two minutes. And and now let’s pray for the next three minutes and pray for our missionaries. And it’s amazing when you just get someone up front, leading actually, in that time of prayer. And people know, I have three minutes, I better not do a soliloquy, I better say a few sentences, this guy is going to interrupt and direct us. So planning and real leadership and to jump in right away, to pray and not to just say it’s a prayer meeting, and then we’ll get to that the last five minutes. Anything to add HB?

H. B. Charles
Yes. I would say pre pandemic. Our schedule was so busy at the church that we were at a period where we kept moving the times of prayer which is okay. Once we entered the pandemic, and it cleaned out some of the things that were on our church schedule, we set and has remained now for three years, a Saturday morning time from eight to nine. And when I mentioned publicly on the remainder of that prayer meeting, I am prone to say that I do not know. I’m talking to my congregation. I do not know, anything more important that we do as a church than this hour of prayer. Me being here causes me to miss that hour. I’d almost rather miss Sunday than that hour of prayer. I would, I think it’s critical to have a concentrated regular time of prayer. And I think, as the brothers mentioned, it needs to be planned well. And for me, that means topics and texts. So there are topics for lack of a better term that we were going to pray for this mission Nari. We’re going to pray for this ministry opportunity that’s before us. But a lot of the time I spend leading us to pray through texts, where I’m just going to read a verse or two. And it may be a command to do something. And I’d say here is the command. Now let’s pray the Lord, to help us to be obedient to this. And just kind of prompting because I’m also trying to show our church to, to pray the scriptures, to pray the Bible. I also, you know, bring into that prayer meeting, I lift it up. And I tell them, I brought my book of magic. It’s a hymnal. This is a book of magic. And I am selecting prayerful hymns. There is a there are rich hymns, that our prayers set to music. And we are I’m teaching I’m trying to teach our church in that hour as well, to pray to God through song as well. And I think that our another particular time is, which is, I guess, just been so meaningful to me. That most weeks the end of that prayer is going primitive is going to be me saying something about the text and the sermon for tomorrow. And we close our closing section of prayer is our is a is a weekly prayer for the regular ministry of the word. And I just feel emboldened to preach as the saints I trust they are praying for the preaching, but to be in that corporate time, where you hear the saints covering the ministry of the word in prayer, praying not just for the delivery of the message, but praying for our hearts to be receptive to it. I just think that’s been I just

Kevin DeYoung
add real quick to that. And it’s something HBO has been underscoring one of our strengths and weaknesses as evangelical often low church sort of Christians Our strength is, we want prayer to really come from the heart. We don’t want it to be rote. We want it to be meaningful. And so we lean to think extemporaneous prayer is really the prayer that counts, and there’s something good about that impulse. But when Jesus and his disciples gathered to pray, almost certainly, they were not doing popcorn prayer. Almost certainly they were they were doing established, synagogue sort of rituals, praying rituals in a battle. They’re praying through psalms, they’re doing the 18th benedictions. So don’t lose that. extemporaneous, heartfelt, but you can pray heartfelt by singing a hymn or using helps from the Valley of vision prayer book or reading scripture and making that your prayer. So sometimes we think that doesn’t really count as prayer. And what HBC said is so good when you come in pray, and I know this is somewhat culturally bound, but when we’ve had prayer meetings, say seven o’clock in the morning, we just say we’re going to start at seven Exactly. We’re going to end at 730 Exactly. Where you’re not allowed to bring muffins. You’re not allowed to bring coffee. You can’t do any of that. We We’re not doing that you’re, we’re someone’s leading, getting us going, we’re praying at seven you can count on it will end at 730. Now I know there’s other cultures say, well, that’s but in most of our cultures in America, you do something like that. And it just gives people the freedom to know. We’re actually going to pray. I know when it’s going to start. I know when it’s going to end. And whatever you can do whether you have an official prayer service or not just start to work in some times of prayer. You probably heard the quit before. It’s an exaggeration, but the quip that said, the people come on Sunday morning, if they love the music, they come on Sunday evening, if they love the preacher, they come to the prayer meeting if they love Jesus.

H. B. Charles
Let me let me tell you, though, we pray for me tonight. And you’re absolutely right. I watch at 901 My church gets out of the Spirit. They when they don’t in at nine, you could just see them looking at the clock at the back of the wall. So I gave you an hour past and they gave you an hour on a Saturday morning. So I do think you also read the spirit. I I am not charismatic, but I have a very high view of the Holy Spirit. And my view, the Holy Spirit is so high that I believe that his work is not limited to the extemporaneous. He can work with a plan. He can work in advance, and he can work with a schedule. trust them to do that.

Kevin DeYoung
As brothers become a Presbyterian.

Colin Smith
Kevin, I was just going to say that at the orchard we are indebted to the Presbyterians on this one and continuing on the theme of plant must be 30 years ago now that current and I went to a communion season in Stornoway in the north of Scotland. marvelous, marvelous occasion. And when communion is served on a Sunday, it’s just twice a year. And as you would know very well. The prayer meeting on the Saturday night by way of preparation is a really important event you actually get a token on it, honestly do that. Yes, sir. Anyway, when we were there 30 years ago, this is what happened. You were given a token that give you admission to one of the seats that would be served on for communion The following morning. So will there 800 People in Stornoway on a Saturday night prayer meeting, and the most remarkable prayer meetings I’ve been in, but we derived his guests were staying in this bed and breakfast. And the person who was leading, gets up and just starts everyone sits, of course to sing and stands to pray. And he said, I call upon the Reverend Colin Smith, from London to lead us and everyone stands to the land. The Bed and Breakfast lady was saying, What do I do I go to the front, or what do I do? No, no, no, you just pray from where you are. So I prayed. And then everyone sat down. And then we sang a song. And then I call upon you know, and then someone else who was a guest was called upon and then other elders and so went on. By the time we got to the end, I thought they’ll think the guy from London had the shortest weakest thinnest of prayers that they’ve ever heard in Stornoway. But that gave me the idea that to call upon particular people to lead in prayer. And for them to have some notice of it is immensely helpful. And at a number of our campuses, in the orchard. That’s what we’re doing now. That will invite people to come and lead in prayer for a particular theme or area. And then one after maybe 12 People will come prepare to lead. And then it’s regularly communicated with others, we’d like to do that, please let us know. And, and so that group expands and so forth. But we found that that immense is immensely helpful in sustaining corporate prayer. It gets rid of all of the long silences and waiting for the next person. And I loved what you said about that. Just the leadership and some direction and some energy being brought to this so that the thing doesn’t lull and lag. planning and preparation has been an interesting theme here. Let’s let’s we we got limited time. Here. We maybe got another six minutes. Yeah, we’re waiting.

H. B. Charles
But I would also say particularly for those leading prayer meetings. I think it’s been done well here over the course of this weekend. Do not be afraid of moments of silence. Good. There is the temptation to program everything. That’s so that they’re all the smooth transitions and that there is no break. But I do think there is a place and there is power in those moments of silence for the saints to prayerfully meditate on what they’re hearing and seeing.

Colin Smith
Prayer in the family, some brief comments on that any wisdom insights from your own experience or from what you’ve seen that others do that has been effective? And then we’ll come back just very briefly to resources to recommend but just first briefly, on the family, any who wants to jump in on that? What have you found useful? I, Kevin, have you got a few children?

Kevin DeYoung
Have? Yes, I have nine children. So it is my wife. It’s good. I sometimes will say, introduce myself say we have. We’re proud parents of five wonderful children we have for others also. But my kids don’t like when I do that. Yeah, I, for I get asked this question or something like it, I get asked a lot of what do you do for family worship? What do you do? And I’m, I’m the person you do and don’t want to ask that question. But my successor at Universal Reformed Church, Jason hopless, is amazing. He’s written books on family worship, and he’s really disciplined. And so do as he does, and listen to him. I’ll tell you, our house is crazy. It really is all the time. We have our guests, our oldest just went to college. So we have we have two to 19. And just about every two years. So the number of times we’re all sitting down is very rare. The number of times we’re all quietly sitting down, it doesn’t exist. So we do what we can. I always pray at night, when I put the kids to bed. We pray before meals, when we are sitting there we we don’t rushing out the door somewhere. We do something very simple for family worship, just doing something is better than doing nothing to plan. A great thing and great intentions. But to do a hymn a Bible passage share, you know, highs and lows is what my kids love to do. It’s it and then just modeling so that your kids see you at different times in dad’s chair, wherever in mom’s spot with a Bible open in prayer pays huge dividends. So there are so much better models than than I am I net for the very disciplined, conscientious family worship night after night. We do what we can. very haphazardly, I admit, but a spirit and season of prayerfulness is important. And here’s more than anything. I won’t get too personal. My dad is very sick. He’s, I don’t know how if he’s going to make it, how long? He’s 73. But I’ll say this, the great gift that He’s given, and I hope I give to my family as well. Yes, he led us in prayer and did all sorts of other things. I never doubted. He loved my mom. He loved his kids. He loved the church. He loved Jesus. You can the rest, figure out the plan, the schedule, the habits, the books, do all of that stuff. And you do all that stuff and you don’t do those things. Your kids are they’re gone. So it’s a lifetime of faithfulness, not discounting those times of prayer at bed, but to give to your family. That that that is that is that is caught not taught, never doubted just what seems normal. Mom and dad love each other mom and dad take us to church. All of those things. Most of you are already doing it. And if you’re doing that you are living a life of other worldliness that pleases God. So keep doing it. It’s really good.

Juan Sanchez
I mentioned earlier that I was in the Navy and my student company commander was a Marine Corps, recon Ranger and and so when I got married, I was you know, we have a small family. We’ll have five kids. I was like, I was captain von Trapp from the you know, without the whistle. And so I just wanted my kids to be ordered. I wanted everything to be scheduled and, and Janine. My wife said, Why do you do you want a home that looks like Better Homes and Gardens? Or do you want relationship with your kids? And I said, Can we have both? And but she she really helped me understand what Kevin is saying. Just the need to have that relationship with our kids. And I do think there’s there’s an importance in planning But there’s just an, you know, there’s a myth of quality, time, quality time actually emerges from just time. Just being together, just doing things together. And just just that time that we have with our children that Deuteronomy six kind of living, you know waking up in the morning together, you know, going to bed. But we did try to have a little bit of structure. And interestingly enough, what we realized, even with five kids, we had two sets of kids. We had the olders, and the littles. And we realized we were less intentional with the littles and we just had to kind of reengage. So just because of our schedule, we could sit and have breakfast together. And we just enjoyed our time together. And we just read a chapter scripture, ask questions, and then just asked how we can be praying for each one each other for the day, at nighttime, we would just read aloud, that became one important piece in our family, the Chronicles of Narnia, you know, The Hobbit, just those kinds of things just reading aloud. When they were little, I would, I would put them to bed. So I would do the reading and catechism. And then I would pray with each one of them something I learned from from a friend of mine. And it was during that time that I had one on one time with each of them. And that just became a really, really sweet time for us. So So there’s something helpful to me about a schedule in order. We’re just living life together. We would love riding in the car together. We did some camping early on. But just being together that that those family connections that emerge just from time together.

Colin Smith
Two minute round brothers, so 30 seconds each, or did you want to add something on this?

H. B. Charles
I would there just three categories that we have tried, of course, scheduled prayer, but our schedule, at times gets chaotic, and it all gets thrown out the window. The other two though, there are strategic times of prayer as a family as good. And that has been a blessing. And I have had to be the one in the development of my family, yours to take the lead of that. So I would have to be vulnerable if I was struggling with something if something difficult was happening in the ministry, to tell the family about an issue and tell them during these days I need or project I needed to finish. But it it was teaching us to pray not just scheduled times. But strategically. What has been most helpful to us is just spontaneous prayer. Our family eats and talks. That’s what we do as a family. And I have I have had to be sensitive to make sure that spontaneously, we are inserting in those times, as the conversations are happening, meaningful moments of prayer where conversations about what’s going on. Turns into moments of prayer, though, that just requires an openness, and a sensitivity to take advantage of those

Juan Sanchez
images we just had. One of the things that is helpful is to when there are great needs in the family to invite your children to pray for those things. And when the Lord answers those prayers, celebrate those with their children, so that they see the Lord is answering our prayers. That’s good.

Colin Smith
Brother, this has been such rich conversation. Let’s just have 30 seconds each on any recommended resource and then Jonathan Chorus was gonna tell us about some books. And then we want folks to have a good break. I’ll mention just two and then 30 seconds, each. Dawn Karstens used to be called a call to spiritual reformation. Is it now called praying with Paul, I think has been Paul’s prayers. Yeah, absolutely marvelous goes through Paul’s prayers in the New Testament. The other thing that I find really helpful is Spurgeon has a sermon called order and argument in prayer. If you just Google that title, you’ll get it. Order and argument in prayer. He goes through several prayers in Scripture and shows how a case is presented to God in prayer. I find that very helpful. Kevin, let’s come back this week.

Kevin DeYoung
A hymnal, Valley of Vision. I mentioned just some lesser known books, probably but Ben Patterson has good books on prayer. This book by David Hanson long wandering prayer was influential for me when I read it years ago. And then I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned in the conference. Johnny Gibson put together this book be thou my vision, which is excellent. And I commend all of you it’s it’s sort of taking the best of kind of a sort of angle kin Book of Common Prayer tradition, and then putting it in so it has 31 days so you can do it through a month and it gives a reading a confessional reading ghost. You can use MC Shane’s it’s it’s a wonderful way if you say what do I do? What is someone in my church? How do I just have a quiet time? There it is. It’s really rich. So it’s called Be thou my vision?

H. B. Charles
Yep, I would mention the Carson book on prayer. There’s a book I read years ago that I reread recently did Eastman’s little book The Hour that changes the world was a blessing to me. And I was refreshed and reading it again. And on top of that, I was just affirmed Valley Vision and in a in a good hymnal.

Juan Sanchez
Yeah. He has a book on prayer. Also, you know, the books that have already been mentioned, I found a praying life by Paul Miller, just a very helpful book for people that just don’t even know where to begin. He just, you know, just D mythologize is what we think prayer is, in very helpful ways. I’m losing an hour, but I can’t remember, oh, Don Whitney has some books that are helpful, praying the Bible. So I do think Scripture and prayer go hand in hand. But praying the Bible, he helps you know how to how to use scripture and pray the Psalms. And so you know, the Bible should be our number one prayer book. He has mentioned hymnals. And, and then other books, like the value of vision prayers that have been written, that are helpful for us, including in Scripture, learning how to pray from prayers in Scripture, whether it’s Paul’s or Nehemiah is, or, you know, chapter two, Nehemiah has what we call the arrow prayer. It’s like, oh, I’m before the king. Let me just shoot this arrow real fast. You know, so there’s just learning from from people who have prayed all, you know, in all different contexts.

Colin Smith
Excellent.