From Sampler to Sower

Two weeks ago I wrote about a new way we were seeking to help our students learn to pray. We’re encouraging students to learn to pray in much the same way they learned to speak, not by talking about prayer, but simply by praying.  We’ve passed out daily prayer cards which have a simple question or instruction for each day, designed to help them open up a conversation with God.

Here is the second set of 16 prayer cards: one daily prayer card and one weekly memory verse card for two weeks.

Teaching Series: Look Up

Message Title: Elijah Was a Man Just Like Us

Sermon in a Sentence: “Elijah was a a man, just like us. He prayed earnestly (James 5:17a).”

Text(s): Psalm 121:1-2, 1 Kings 16-18, James 5:17

Message Summary:

We started a new series at Water’s Edge this week called Look Up. The theme verse from the series is Psalm 121:1-2:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth (NIV).

The Psalmist asks where he can turn for help, and he knows the answer.  “My help comes from the Lord.”  When we need help, we don’t look to other things or other people.  We’re called to lift up our eyes and turn to God.  In this series we’ll be learning what it means to live a life a prayer — a life that looks up.

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We’re starting a new series at our midweek youth service, Water’s Edge, tonight.  The goal is to help our students learn to pray.  (Watch later in the week for a full summary of our service.)

We realize that it’s one thing to talk about prayer.  But learning to pray is like learning how to talk.  You don’t learn to talk by listening to lessons about talking.  You learn to talk by doing it.

So to help our students not just learn about prayer, but actually learn to pray, we’re preparing daily prayer cards.  They include a simple prayer prompt from one of the four types of prayer: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. It’s a way to give students something to talk to God about, and then turn them loose to do it.

Here are the first two weeks cards, along with a weekly Bible verse card for memorization.  They are in no particular order, in fact we plan to shuffle them up before we give them to students so no one has the cards in the same order.

Update: Here is the second, two-week set.

We know that one of the formative influences on the thought and theology of John Wesley was Bishop Jeremy Taylor and his book Holy Living and Dying.

Here is a prayer for holy intentions designed by Taylor to be prayed at the outset of study and preaching.  It is both beautiful and profound, and I offer it here without further comment, in the hopes that it will challenge and inspire you as it has me.

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I will admit: I love the Psalms.

OK, so maybe that isn’t so shocking of an admission.  It’s about as unexpected as a Miss America candidate announcing she is against poverty and for world peace.  But my love for the Psalms rises from deep inside of me.  I find them most helpful in guiding my prayer.  I love it when I open this centuries old document and find my voice in its pages, crying to God out of the depths.

One of my favorite moments in my devotions each week is when I open the Psalms to see what Psalm I will be living in for the next seven days.  Both of my favorite devotional guides, Job and Shawchucks A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants and Benson and Benson’s Disciplines for the Inner Life feature one Psalm per week.  It exciting to come each Monday morning and see what Psalm it will be this week, because it is always surprising to see the way God speaks into my life through that song.

Well, it usually is. (more…)