Living Life Like A Festival - 1 - Prayer

Today we are going to be starting a new series called ‘living life like a festival’. Over the next few weeks we are going to look at how we can live a life that is full-on for Jesus. Living every day as if we were at a festival.

Today we are going to be focusing on prayer. Prayer is simply communicating with God. Before we start to focus on this we are going to play a game to get us communicating with each other.

So has anyone found out something just now about someone that you did not know before?

Just as we have just been communicating with each other, and through talking to each other have discovered new things that we did not know before. It is the same when we choose to communicate with God, prayer is the way that we can communicate with God.

In 1 Timothy 2 : 1 - 4 we are encouraged to bring everything to God though prayer. Some of our prayers might be requests, asking God for help, or guidance. We see in the Bible this is called prayers of petition.

Other prayers that we make are for other people (called intersession). These might be for people we know who like or friends and family. They could also be for our leaders our leaders, our country or for nations or situations across the world.

Finally we are encouraged to pray saying thank you for the things that are going well in our lives, giving God the recognition that he deserves.

We also see in this passage that Jesus acts as our mediator, our middle man between us and God, though is death and resurrection.

Jesus wants to be involved with our lives all the time, and wants us to communicate with him throughout the day, not just on a Sunday, or in the morning or before you go to bed.

Our prayers do not need to be long and fancy. You don’t need to sit or stand in a particular way, or shut your eyes or hold your hands together, although this can help us to concentrate. Jesus simply wants to be kept in your activity feed, with you turning to him throughout your day.

Just like you might share with your friends how you are feeling on social media, you can share with Jesus how you are feeling though prayer.

Spend a few moments thinking about the past week, and the different situations that you have gone thought.

Communicating with God is more than us just speaking to God. It is also about us ‘listening’ to him as well. What are some of the ways that we can hear from God?

God has created us all to be unique, and we will all hear God in different ways. None of these ways are better or more holy than others. However God often speaks to us in a very gentle, subtle way. A great example of this is when God spoke to Elijah which we can read in 1 Kings 19 : 11 - 13.

Here we see powerful events taking place in front of Elijah, including an earthquake, a storm and a fire. However God was not speaking though any of these things. God instead chose to speak to him through a gentle whisper.

Elijah had a good relationship with God and was able to recognise his voice in this whisper. However it can very often be the case that God is trying to talk to us, but we do not hear him.

Often we do not hear him, because we are not giving God the time and space to speak or because we are not playing attention and listening out for is gentle voice throughout our busy and noisy lives. Listening to God is something that we need to continue to work at and value throughout our lives.

How do you, or could you make time to listen to God?

We see in the Bible that prayer isn’t meant to just be a private activity but should be something that we do for each other. In James 5 : 13 - 16 we are encouraged to pray for one another, both when asking God for forgives, but also to build up and encourage each other.

Throughout the Bible we also see many examples of the disciples praying for healing for the sick. At the end of every service at church we have people praying for healing, both for physical and emotional pain.

We are all able to pray for other people, and pray for healing. When we pray for healing we tend to follow a five step model, which helps us to pray for someone effectively. Do you know what some of these steps are?

Whenever we pray for someone else the most important thing is that that person feels loved, both by you and by God, and be sensitive to the person that we are praying for.

We are going to spend some time now praying for each other. As we mentioned earlier we can pray asking for help or healing, we can pray to encourage and we can pray thanking God for what he has done.

So pair up with someone, and take it in turns to pray for each other.