Autumn Ministry School part 5
Becky writes about using Pete Greig’s book, Dirty Glory, as the basis for the prayer school.
Prayer School
“The bible teaches that prayer is the most transformational force in the lives of individuals, churches and even nations. Whenever and wherever God’s people truly rediscover their purpose, their peculiarity and their power, they do so through prayer.”*
Let’s be really honest for a moment. Is this your current experience of prayer?
The reality is that knowing how to pray is less important than wanting to do it.
Dirty Glory
Journeying through Pete Greig’s book Dirty Glory, we have discovered that prayer doesn’t have to be boring and benign. “Quiet prayer can certainly change us, but the kind of prayer that changes the world is more ‘fight club’ than golf club.”
The book leads us along two axes: first the vertical axis of approaching God in prayer and worship.
We are learning that the starting place for prayer must always be the pursuit of God’s presence. The time we set aside to pray is actually the time we refocus, becoming fully aware of His presence once again.
Carrying God’s presence
When this is our starting point for prayer, we can carry God’s presence into the other twenty-three hours of the day, knowing all the time He is with us. We don’t store up prayers for our ‘prayer time’, we pray in real time, right there and then! We learn to sit with Him, listen to Him and love Him.
From this place of encountering the Father’s presence we travel along the second axis which is horizontal: to go into all the world to make disciples.
There’s a Russian proverb: ‘Pray to God but continue to row for the shore’.
Prayer must outwork itself in action in the form of mission and justice. “It is about the saying of prayers, but also the becoming of prayers in a thousand practical ways.”
Changing the Culture
We are learning together the power of prayer to change the culture and the communities God has put us in. To discover what it might look like for the kingdom of God to radically transform both the spiritual and practical needs of the people around us.
And in doing so, to take God’s glory out into a dirty world.
God my Father,
you love us too much to leave us where we are;
Jesus my Lord,
you ‘live to intercede’ for us;
Holy Spirit,
you are praying for us now with groans beyond talking;
lead us out into the wild frontiers of faith.
May our desire for your presence begin to erupt
beyond the predilections of current circumstance.
May the frameworks of normality begin to feel intolerable.
Compel us to wonder, inspire us to innovate,
provoke us to rage against injustice.
*All quotes taken from Dirty Glory by Pete Greig.
Thank you Becky
