Week 6 (19.10.08)

This week we prayed! We looked a three different areas of prayer: praying about our worries, praying for each other, and asking God for forgiveness.

At one prayer station, we thought of things we wanted to bring to God in prayer, and made plasticine models of something that represented this so that we could reflect on it more easily and so that, when we prayed as a group in the end, we could remember what everyone wanted prayer for. Philippians 4:6-7 says: "The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." So we know that we should bring all worries to God who will take them from us and help us cope with whatever we're going through. Nothing is too big for him to cope with, and nothing is too small for him to care about: if it matters to you, it matters to him!

At the second prayer station, we talked about praying with other people. The Bible says in many places that it is very important for us to pray for other Christians (as well as non-Christians!) both on our own remembering them in our private prayers, but also with them, and it is also vital that we feel we can bring our prayer requests to other Christians. The Bible says that we are a family and that we should love one another, and what better way to do so than to pray with each other about all the things that we are burdened by or all the things we have to thank God for?! We spoke about basic do's and don'ts when praying other people: we said that it was better for girls to pray with girls and boys with boys (unless praying in a group, in which case there should be at least one person of the same gender as the person being prayed for present - it's just easier that way!); that it is good to lay hands on the person being prayed for - if they want it! - but that that should always be in an appropriate place (common sense, people!); we also said that if someone asks you to pray about something with them, we don't go telling all our friends what they needed prayer for. The people we are praying for are loved by Jesus just as much as we are, he died for them as much as he did for you and therefore we must treat them with the utmost respect and love. When someone has come to you for prayer, they should, if nothing else, go away knowing that they are loved by God and by you. We pray for one another to build community in Christ and to be a part of what God wants to do in each other's lives: it's very exciting that we have the privilege to do this, but we must remember that anything that God does is done by him and not by us just because it was us praying! We also said that we shouldn't be afraid of silences in prayer, that it is good to wait on God and to see what it is he wants to do.

Finally at the third prayer station we talked about confessing our sins to God. 1 John 1:9 says: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." We know that there is nothing that God won't forgive us if we bring it to him and ask for forgiveness, Romans 8:1 says: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus," so we shouldn't live with the guilt of all the wrong things we have done and feel undeserving of forgiveness: of course we don't deserve it, but none of us do and yet God's grace covers all our sin anyway: he has forgiven us even though we don't deserve it. He wants us to live in freedom from sin and so if we don't tell him about what we've done and say that we're sorry, it will stay will us and hold us back from our relationship with him.

We were going to go on to do a big praise session together, but didn't have the time (which we can only think is a good thing because we obviously got so into our praying together in groups!) so we will hopefully cover this another time.

Special thank you to FAY for running the confession station for us, you're a star!!!

Lois and Eleanor