This is continuing our series of posts following up on Dr. Don Whitney‘s visit to our church this past weekend and the call to reform our families with active family worship.
Today, I want to encourage you in prayer. Hopefully, you were here for Friday night’s sessions as Dr. Whitney gave an overview on praying through Scripture. Here’s an article entitled “Don’t Always Pray the Same Prayer.” The simple outline, you remember, for family worship is the read a portion of the Bible, pray and sing. As we seek to pray, simple grab a truth from your time in the Word with your family and use that as new language in prayer.
Some families have prayer lists. In Disciplines of a Godly Family by Kent and Barbara Hughes, they say,
“Experience has taught us that a prayer list is indispensable. Our own tendency to mental laziness in times of prayer, especially when we were tired, necessitated a list. A prayer list helps concentrate the mind and helps us recall the little things as well as the big. We found that when we did not have our lists, we would forget to pray for needs that we had presumed were impossible to forget. Likewise, prayer lists aid you in being more systematic in prayer, and they help monitor intercessory progress as requests are scratched off and added. (p.75).
A prayer list could easily become, to quote Whitney, saying the same old things about the same old things, but it could also be a means to journal, as a family, about how God is answering the prayers you are consistently bringing before him. It is merely another tool to use.
But above all, use your time together as a family to PRAY!