How to Disciple Others in Prayer (It’s Not as Hard as You Might Think)

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part VI of our series on Making Disciples

Few of us have been intentionally discipled in the area of prayer; fewer still equipped to disciple others in the same.

That’s a problem.

That’s why today, I’d like to do a little discipleship-via-blog so that you may go on to disciple others in this area.  We’ll use a process called guided prayers.

The goal of guided prayers is this: for a more mature Christian to be able to teach a less mature Christian how to pray.

How?

By showing them how to collect and form their spontaneous thoughts into prayer that’s comprehensive.

Laurence Hull Stookey is the professor emeritus of preaching and worship at the Wesley Theological Seminary. Let me share with you how he teaches parents to guide their children in how to pray. Whether you’re guiding children or adults, the process works the same way.  This is what he writes in the purchase-worthy book, This Day: A Wesleyan Way of Prayer:

In moving from prayers children overhear adults say to prayers that even children utter on their own behalf, there is a crucial intermediate step that can be called “guided prayer.” It may best occur as the closing event of family prayer just before the child’s bedtime, and it can arise out of a simple review of the child’s activities that day:

Adult: What happened today that made you happy?

Child: We had fun playing outside this afternoon.

Adult: Then let’s thank God in this way: “God, thank you for the warm weather, for the green grass, for times of laughing and having fun. Thank you for the friends and playmates you give.”

[Once the child becomes familiar with the procedure, the child may be encouraged to speak the prayer phrase-by-phrase after an adult.]

Stookey suggests the adult also ask the child, “What happened today that made you unhappy?” “Did you do anything today for which you are sorry?” and, “Whom do you love and care about, who needs God’s help?”

In the course of this brief activity see how the child has been introduced to thanksgiving, petition, confession, and intercession. Over time children will learn to form their own short prayers, with the adult asking only the leading questions, followed perhaps by.

“Now how will you talk to God about this?” 

Regrettably, the only time most Evangelical Christians experience this kind of guided discipleship in prayer is at the very inception of their faith when they are led to repeat “the Sinner’s Prayer” phrase by phrase. For all the problems we’ve covered on this blog about using that kind of an approach to evangelism, one of the good things about it is the way it models for the new Christian something of how to pray.

Sadly, however, it is likely the last guided prayer that most new Christians will have the benefit of praying.

Well, except for one other one. You may recall how Jesus responded when his disciples asked him, “Will you guide us through the process of learning how to pray?” And he said, “Imitate me as I pray: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven…’”

In so doing, he poured out a little bit more of his relationship with the Father into his disciples, and that has been poured faithfully and carefully through every generation in Christian history right on up to you.

So, steward it well. Don’t spill it! Use the Lord’s Prayer and guided processes of prayer to teach others how to pray.

When you do, you will be faithfully carrying out part of the Great Commission of teaching those whom the Lord gives to you everything he commanded you.

How often have you prayed, or trained others in praying, using guided prayers?  What were the results?  

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Prayer: The Neglected Area of Discipleship

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part V of our series on Making Disciples

“Did you teach them how to receive all the grace that I poured into you?”

That, as we learned in our last post, is the question each teacher will have to answer on the last day.  And one of the most fitting applications is prayer.  It goes without saying that we ought to be discipling less mature Christians in prayer, pouring our experience out into them.

But, surprisingly, prayer is an area that receives comparatively little instructional attention at an individual level.

Arthur Paul Boers is pastoral theology professor at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and he points out in a well-crafted Christianity Today article that our individualism these days makes us reluctant to use the method Jesus used to train people how to pray:

Imitation.

We think if you don’t come up with all your own words it’s somehow insincere. What a weird modern idea! Of course you learn how to pray by imitating other Christians! And that’s why Christians need to pray together, out loud, with more mature Christians guiding the process. Sadly, that’s just not the way we pray today. Here’s what Boers writes:

Too often, people who pray do so only briefly, without discipline or organization. They pray “on the fly,” winging phrases toward God while commuting, or squeezing in an occasional devotional. Such prayers are ad hoc and self-directed: made up along the way, according to mood, and not paying attention to the Christian year.

Rather than having help, support, or direction from others with maturity or experience, many Christians decide on their own what to do. As a result, they find themselves increasingly disconnected and isolated from other believers. They are subjective; guided by their feelings of the moment, they freely abandon prayer modes (confession, praise, intercession). In the end, these Christians find themselves increasingly disconnected from God.

The question is not whether Christians ought to pray written prayers or spontaneous ones.  Rather, it’s:

How can Christians be discipled to grow in the Work of Piety of prayer?

Written prayers are one possible tool, but they can just as equally inhibit growth if we read them without learning how to imitate them in our own prayers.

Guidance on how to do that is key.  In our next post, we’ll see a real-life example of what it looks like to guide someone through the process of imitation in prayer.  Don’t miss it.

What about you?  How did you learn to pray?  What authors, books, pastors, or verses played a key role in your own prayer life?

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The Question Every Disciple-Maker Must Answer

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Part IV of our series on Making Disciples

Jesus is getting ready to ascend into heaven. After three years, a death, a resurrection, and forty days of appearances he has raised up a tiny but fully discipled band.

Now, in Matthew 28:16-20 Jesus is dispatching them to disciple the entire world. So what are his final words to them? They’re surprisingly unsentimental. He doesn’t talk about faithfulness or perseverance or belief.

Instead, he speaks about discipleship. 

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

“Obey everything” is a really interesting phrase. I like what discipleship specialist Jeremy Pryor writes about that. He says:

“Obey everything I have commanded you” means discipleship must be comprehensive. Most people ignore this line with a sigh and saying to themselves, “See, it’s impossible.” We have an enlightenment definition of comprehensive knowledge but I think both Jesus and the disciples thought this was entirely possible, maybe in a 1–2 year process. Paul says to the Ephesian elders after 2 years, “I didn’t shrink from declaring all that God wants you to know” (Acts 20:27). So we move on to part 27 in our 49 part series through the book of Luke not considering that we are actually responsible to train each disciple in our care to obey “everything.” This requires an aggressive, comprehensive, systematic plan for discipleship.

That’s the .W model.

And a big part of that model is that we can only pour into others what we are fully aware of having received personally from Christ.

Thus, we are not teaching only information.

We are, instead, pouring out a lifetime of experience—or, more appropriately, personal gifts received from Christ. We can disciple a student to share bread because Christ has shared his bread with us. We can disciple a student to heal and comfort because we have personally experienced the healing and comfort of Christ.

You can see this in the life of the apostle Paul. Christ has emptied himself into Paul, and Paul is deeply aware of this. He writes in Philippians 2 that Christ emptied himself and took on the form of a servant. Now, as the end of Paul’s own life approaches, he draws on the same language of self-emptying, in a personal note to his disciple Timothy. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 4:5-8:

But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

On the last day, the question of the Lord for each teacher will not only be, “Did you teach them to obey everything I commanded?” but rather, “Did you teach them how to receive all the grace that I poured into you?”

How would you answer that question?  What is your strategy for teaching others to receive the same grace God poured into you?

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