6 Weeks of Prayer Syllabus Welcome
Welcome
Welcome to the 6 Weeks of Prayer. Over the next few weeks your experience and understanding of prayer will grow significantly. In addition, your Bible reading will take on new meaning as you’re introduced to the wide variety of prayers.
The 6 Weeks of Prayer is a time of focus for the entire church family. The weekly Sabbath messages compliment and expand upon the topics discussed in each of the small groups. The small groups meet weekly to worship, pray, study and plan an outreach event. Use your syllabus each day and incorporate your daily devotions with the Meditation and lesson study.
In the last days of earth’s history, people around the world and in our communities will be hungry to hear the words of God. The Lord will use the same means of spreading the “good news” at the end of time as he did at the beginning—believers sharing God’s word with others. In Acts 2 we find the early church organized into meeting together in large groups in the temple courts and small groups in homes to share God’s words. As a result “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Acts 2:46-47 (NIV)
We pray your time spent in personal devotions, small group interaction and attending Sabbath services will ignite a flame of anticipation of the Lord’s Second Coming and the necessity to share the “good news” with your friends, family and neighbors.
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6 Weeks of Prayer Syllabus Introduction
Introduction
The 6 Weeks of Prayer syllabus is the result of weeks of study and days of prayer. The intention of the 6 Weeks of Prayer is two fold. Our first goal is to gain insight into the treasure called “prayer.” What is prayer? How do we interface with God? How does prayer work? And many topics will be explored.
The Second goal is to experience a prayer renewal in your life. We want to both learn about prayer and put it into practice. Each time I study prayer, a new gem is found and my prayer life deepens. For example, in the first week you’ll learn how to meditate. Then, you’ll practice meditation each week. All of us learned to pray from someone. This is the opportunity to learn from examining the Bible and reading the prayers of the early church leaders.
The syllabus is arranged with one study each week for a total of six studies on prayer. Two articles entitled How Prayer Works and Responding to Lover were published in a special edition of the Adventist Review published in May of 1997. The article entitled Joining our Prayers with His was published in Ministry Magazine, January 2005. Those articles are credited to the authors and include footnotes.
The remaining three articles entitled, Meditation, The Lord Teaches Us to Pray and Following God’s Direction were written by Mitch Williams either during his doctoral studies at Fuller Seminary or more recently for pastoral considerations.
Mitch Williams
February 7, 2006
Downey, California
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6 Weeks of Prayer Syllabus Small Groups
Helpful Hints for Small Groups
· Use the “Calendar” page in the back of the syllabus to share group responsibilities and allow for group ownership.
· Begin your groups on time to honor those who are there and establish the habit of beginning and ending on time.
· Be certain everyone is introduced each meeting.
· Never ask a person to pray or facilitate unless you’ve cleared it with him/her in advance.
· As people are gathering, talk about answered prayers, God’s miracles, spiritual experiences and needs.
· What is talked about in the groups stays in the groups.
· List the prayer needs of those in your group on the “prayer & praise” page.
· The small group process is divided into four parts as listed below:
a. Welcome and Worship: 15 minutes
b. Prayer: 15 minutes
c. Outreach: 30 minutes
d. Syllabus Lesson: 30 minutes
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Outreach: Plan an outreach project to put into practice what you’re learning.
Outreach Ideas
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6 Weeks of Prayer Syllabus Week 1
Welcome and Worship
· Greet one another in love. Ask each person to name the month of his/her birth. Beginning with the January birth months, invite the group to introduce the person on their right.
· Sing with the iworship@home DVD one or two selections.
Prayer
· At the first small group gathering, the leader may offer his/her own prayer or use the prayer below or any combination as lead by the Holy Spirit.
· Reassure the group no one will be asked to pray spontaneously.
· Before the prayer ask if there are any prayer needs. Ask the Lord to lead you in deciding an outreach project.
· Invite a brief discussion about prayer. Many are shy or unsure how to pray. Remind the group that prayer is like talking with a friend.
· Talk about other ways to pray beside just one person leading the prayer. Pair-up for prayer or try a conversational prayer.
· Below is a prayer from Jesus.
At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Matt 11:25-27 (NIV)
Outreach: Plan an outreach project
Ask the group to briefly discuss an outreach project and be prepared to share their ideas at the next meeting. An outreach project is simply helping a person or a family. The following are a few examples of outreach projects. Discover the needs of a neighbor, friend or family member the group could collectively help. Take food or other helpful items to a family. Help a single parent or senior person with chores around the house. Tutor kids in the neighborhood who need help in reading?
MEDITATION
Mutually satisfying communication happens when two individuals share equally in talking and listening. A one sided conversation is boring. Most of us have been stuck in a so-called conversation with a person who simply talks all the time! As interest wanes, listening becomes a tedious task. This kind of situation is not a dialogue but a monologue. With only one individual doing most of the talking, communication becomes one sided.
Thinking about this honestly, there may be instances when any one of us might be that boring person doing all the talking when we pray. I don’t mean to say that God is ever bored with our prayers. But, I am emphasizing the one-sidedness that most of us practice in prayer.
In general, prayers tend more towards a monologue rather than a dialogue for we rarely take the time to listen to what God wants to say to us! No doubt, there are instances when an individual must empty his or her heart to God as a kind of catharsis. But, in this discussion, we desire to focus on the joy of meditation and listening to God as an addition to your prayer life.
Our Heavenly Father is gracious and loves to listen to His children. Let’s learn to follow His example and begin to listen to Him. As we make time to listen to God, our prayer experience will come alive as God responds to us in new ways.
There is a time that makes space for God. It is the ancient practice of meditation. Meditation allows God to speak while we listen. It is a purposeful listening to God’s “still small voice.” We live in a world of noise from traffic, airplanes, televisions and radios. Even magazines and newspapers leave us a bit unsettled. Meditation is the time to be still, putting aside the noises of the world to listen for God’s voice.
To some, meditation may be a new idea. Yet, it is really an ancient practice whose benefits are being rediscovered. The following are selected scriptures to illustrate the biblical foundation for meditation.
MEDITATION IS BIBLICAL
“And Isaac went out to meditate in the field in the evening”
(Gen. 24:63).
“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Ps. 1:1,2).
“I think of thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the watches of the night”
(Ps. 63:6).
My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate upon thy promise” (Ps. 119:148).
We have wonderful examples of Bible characters seeking God through meditation. We will do well to learn from them.
E. G. White encourages us to take time each day for “prayerful meditation.” She writes, “The words and the character of Christ should be often the subject of our thoughts and of our conversation, and each day some time should be especially devoted to prayerful meditation upon these sacred themes.”1
EASTERN VS. BIBLE MEDITATION
Before we proceed, we ought to distinguish Bible meditation from eastern meditation. As we have noticed from the scriptures above, meditation is a biblical practice. Meditation is the opportunity to be still and listen for God’s wisdom and guidance.
On the other hand, prompted for the need of God but confused just how to find him, some have turned to Eastern meditation for direction. Eastern meditation understands God as a sort of “Cosmic-mind” rather than a personal God who wants to have a relationship with us. Some Eastern thought includes the notion of “works” to empty self of all wrong habits. The idea is to impress the “Cosmic-mind” of one’s worthiness and earn a place with the “power-source.” Others embrace an Eastern form of meditation thinking it demands no need to lead a moral life. The point of meditation is for selfish reasons alone like to feel better, lower the blood pressure or simply exercise. As a result, we are witnessing what has been called a “New Age” movement in our culture.
Now there is nothing new (Eccl. 1:8-10) about the New Age movement. The New Age movement has simply adopted “old” Eastern forms of meditation like Zen and Yoga. The gulf between Eastern meditation and Bible meditation is as wide as the gulf that Lazarus observed between himself and the rich man (Luke 16:26).
From his book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster makes the, following comparisons and observations between Eastern meditation and Bible meditation.
“Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to empty the mind in order to fill it. (With God and His word.)
“All Eastern forms of meditation stress the need to become detached from the world. There is an emphasis upon losing personhood and individuality and merging with the Cosmic Mind. . . . Detachment is the final goal of Eastern religion. It is an escaping from the miserable wheel of existence. There is no God to be attached to or to hear from. (Since God is conceived as a “power-source” or “Cosmic-mind” and not personal or relational.)
“Christian meditation goes far beyond the notion of detachment. The detachment from the confusion all around us is in order to have a richer attachment to God and to other human beings. Christian meditation leads us to the inner wholeness necessary to give ourselves to God freely, and to the spiritual perception necessary to attack social evils. In this sense it is the most practical of all the Disciplines.”2
Christian meditation is an opportunity to quiet oneself from all the noise and distractions of life in order to fill our hearts with God and his love. While emptying the heart and mind of evil is a noble and necessary process, leaving it vacant is merely advertising for any vagrant evil spirits to find a home. It is like leaving your doors and windows wide open and leaving on vacation. Jesus warns us not to leave our homes empty. Read Luke 11:24-26.
The point of meditation is a practice of tuning-out all the traffic, media, the Internet, cell phones and worry to focus on our loving God. Let’s give it a try and then discuss our finding.
MEDITATION DEFINED
Our working definition is that meditation is an act of devotion through which we seek the spiritual reality of God’s kingdom.
“Being asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, “The kingdom of God 1S not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you”” (Luke 17:20,21).
Jesus himself ushered in the kingdom of God as evidenced from the scripture above. Now it is plain to us that we still live on this earth and not in heaven! Yet, our Lord said the kingdom of God is in our midst. How can we understand this?
Just as in days of old, the king of any country retained his authority by defeating his enemies. His authority came through his victories. In anticipation of His victory at the cross, Jesus told a parable of the fall of a “strong man” (the devil) by one who is “stronger than he” (Christ). (see Luke 11:21,22) The authority of Christ has overruled the devil and broken down his stronghold. Christ underscored his authority by casting out those possessed by a demon. (i.e., Mark 1:21-21) The kingdom of God has come and His authority is supreme.