Grow, Prayer, Study Guide: Everyday Heroes, Week 3

Posted on Aug 29, 2016 in General |

Our hope at River City is that you grow daily in your walk with God! One way to do that is to spend time with God every day. This Grow, Pray and Study Guide (GPS)  is just one easy way to connect with God on a daily basis.
 

Everyday Heroes

Week 3
 
A couple weeks ago Pastor Derek mentioned the importance of prayer in his sermon and challenged River City to be a people of prayer. We need to be reminded of this. In Luke
9:28 the disciples have a powerful experience praying with Jesus. Here is a River City Challenge. Set an alarm on Your phone for 9:28 AM and PM. When your alarm goes off let this be a call to prayer. Pray for your church, family and someone who needs Gods love in their life. Also pray for anything else that comes to mind.  The activities below will guide you in prayer throughout the week. 
 

Monday

The ACTS Prayer
One structure for prayer is given by the acronym A.C.T.S., representing adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication (or intercession.)  We start off focusing on who God is, and praising him for that. Others find a C.A.T.S. pattern helpful, beginning by clearing out of the way the things that sadden God in our lives, before we can go onto praise him.  Let’s look briefly at each in turn :
 

 

Adoration is to adore God, to worship him and to fulfill the commandment to love him with all of our heart, mind and soul. As we spend time in adoration, we praise God for who He is – our Creator, our Sustainer and our Redeemer. 

Confession allows us to clear away the things in the relationship between you and God which are displeasing to Him. All of us have sinned. St John writes in his epistle “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (I Jn 1:8,9)  

Thanksgiving. From childhood we are brought up to say “Thank You” when someone does something for us, or gives us a gift. Each moment God is blessing us, every minute we can recall the wonderful things that God has done for us, and the gifts that we have been given. And so, we need to be constantly thanking God for his blessings. In writing to Timothy, Paul makes it clear that we also need to be giving thanks for everyday, worldly things “ I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—  for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” 1 Tim 2:1.

Supplication or Intercession. Finally we come to ask God for our needs and the needs of others. There are many demands on our prayer time – many topics and issues that we could pray for, so we need to choose, and to be specific. 

 

Tuesday

The Lord’s Prayer, Read Matthew 6:5-15.

The Lords Prayer is something we take for granted but it is very powerful. Take a few moments to pray this prayer line by line pausing to pray about the things that come to mind when you read the line 

 

Wednesday

Read John 17

Jesus prays that he will be used to glorify God. He also prays for his disciples and the disciples that will come after them.  Spend some time in prayer today asking God to use you to show people Gods glory. Are there special people you need to show love to today? Also spend some time in prayer for those people closest to you. Finally pray for those that come to mind that need a special touch from Christ. Pray as Jesus prayed. 

 

 

Thursday

Allow a circumstance or situation to come to mind where you really need God to move. A song we sing in worship is “Prepare the Way”. Listen to this song (click here) and ask God to prepare the way in your circumstance. Also simply pray the name of Jesus over the circumstance. You can simply say “Jesus” or name the circumstance and say “I give this to you Jesus”. The key is to repeat the phrase over and over. 

 

Friday

Driving for Jesus

Listen to the radio today, but each time a commercial comes on turn it off and pray. You can use one of the above examples or pray in any way you feel led.