Prayer
We are so grateful for the work of Practicing the Way for developing material to help us grow in our discipleship to Jesus and also to make it accessible to us for free. They have developed an awesome 4 week curriculum, which we will be following for the month of April 2024.
Here is our plan:
Andrew will be preaching a series on Prayer and we would love to invite you to train in developing your prayer life with us. We believe that when you are intentional about your relationship with Jesus, He will show up in very beautiful and unexpected ways.
We are asking you to join with your home group, a community you choose if you are out of town, a group of friends, or by yourself and watch the weekly videos from Practicing the Way. (You can watch them before you meet or during, but we have found it most effective to watch together.) Then you discuss the material and engage in prayer practices…then get together the next week to see how it went. This will be a simple 4 week commitment.
To be ready and jump all the way in, consider purchasing or downloading the Prayer Guide book. You may also want to go ahead and order the book Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton.
If you are planning to walk through these four weeks with a group in your town, alone, or with a home group, you will want to join the Practicing the Way Chapel Group to get access to all the videos you will use for discussion. Follow this link and join our group.
Sermons
Week 1: A Conversation
This week Andrew looks at what it means to start a conversation with God.
Listen to the Sermon on Apple podcast here!
Listen to the Sermon on Spotify here!
Week 2: A Dialogue
As we continue our prayer journey, we look to shift from talking “At” God, to talking “With” God.
Listen to the Sermon on Apple podcast here!
Listen to the Sermon on Spotify here!
Week 3: Navigation
This week we look at what it means to discern what we hear or sense from God.
Listen to the Sermon on Apple podcast here!
Listen to the Sermon on Spotify here!
Week 4: Presence
As we wrap up our prayer journey, we are reminded to be with God, to find time to be alone, in quiet prayer.
Listen to the Sermon on Apple podcast here!
Listen to the Sermon on Spotify here!
Guides
Prayer: Practice Guide
Download the free digital guide here!
Prayer: Practice Guide
Buy the paperback book here!
Prayer Week 1: Companion Guide
This week’s video tutorial from Stahan Coleman will guide you in praying the Lord’s Prayer.
Watch the video here!
Prayer Week 2: Companion Guide
Watch the video here!
Prayer Week 3: Companion Guide
Watch the video here!
Prayer Week 4: Companion Guide
In this week’s video tutorial from Stahan Coleman you will learn to pray the Beholding Prayer (The Window of the Soul).
Watch the video here!
Reading Recommendations
Beholding: Deepening Our Experience in God
How can time with God be a source of peace in a loud and distracting world? In Beholding, spiritual director and poet Strahan Coleman invites readers to discover the joy of being with God, not just working for Him. As they inhabit the art of resting in God’s presence, prayer becomes not only a place of seeking, but becoming.
Beholding calls Christians to understand how:
- Prayer is so much more than spoken conversation between us and God; it’s a way of existing together.
- Beholding God in prayer is profoundly connected to beholding and dignifying others.
- Embracing prayer practices from different Christian traditions digs a deep well of peace in the soul.
- Our everyday ordinary lives can become the meeting place for God through silence, solitude, community, creation, and hospitality.
Buy the paperback book or kindle version here!
Podcasts
Prayer Week 1: Talking to God
In Luke 11, the very first disciples of Jesus ask him something profound. They don’t ask Him how to heal the sick, or how to perform miracles, or how to gain salvation. They ask Jesus something simpler: to teach them to pray.
Listen to the episode on Apple podcast here!
Listen to the episode on Spotify here!
Prayer Week 2: Talking with God
If you have any amount of experience with prayer, you probably have questions. Why does God answer some of my prayers and not others? Why does God wait to answer my prayers? If Jesus came to seek and save the lost and if prayer is powerful, then why doesn’t God seem to answer prayers for my lost friends and family?
Listen to the episode on Apple podcast here!
Listen to the episode on Spotify here!
Prayer Week 3: Listening to God
In the last two episodes of the series, we learned about talking to God and talking with God. And like in many contexts in our modern world, we are better at talking than we are at listening. So what does it look like to listen to God? To hear his voice?
Listen to the episode on Apple podcast here!
Listen to the episode on Spotify here!
Prayer Week 4: Being with God
In this discussion on the fourth movement of prayer, you’ll hear what it means to go from talking to God, talking with God, and listening to God…to being with God. Existing together in his presence…free from any words at all.
Listen to the episode on Apple podcast here!
Listen to the episode on Spotify here!
Luminary Interview: Jonathan Tremaine Thomas
How should we exist in the tension between contemplation and action? Between listening and speaking? Between public and private? Where do our thoughts and prayers enter in? Join us for a conversation with luminary thinker, Jonathan Tremaine Thomas. This conversation covers contemplative activism, praying in the spirit, and the communion with God found in fasting.
Listen to the episode on Apple podcast here!
Listen to the episode on Spotify here!
Luminary Interview: Strahan Coleman
In this final episode of season 2 of the Rule of Life podcast, we are joined by Strahan Coleman for a conversation on experiencing God, the differences between the fruits of the spirit and the gifts of the spirit, the dangers of depersonalizing God, and how to bring ourselves to silence.
Listen to the episode on Apple podcast here!
Listen to the episode on Spotify here!