Prayer is important in the Kingdom of God. But 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 tells us to pray without ceasing and Philippians 4:6 encourages us to bring our requests before God in all things. That’s a high bar to meet! Yet it doesn’t have to become a burden or boring task to complete. Praying for your Disciple Making Communities (DMC) and those they’re reaching can be life-giving for you as well as others.
Let’s talk about six simple ways you can increase the prayer life of your Disciple Making Communities (DMC) today!
How to Increase Prayer
- Pick a few Bible verses to regularly pray over yourself and those in your DMC
- Join a few others in your group to take a prayer walk through each other’s neighborhood
- Use the Waha app to gain better insight into what Scripture says about prayer
- Make a prayer calendar
- Host a prayer night with your DMC
- Use a simple flow with your prayers like : UP, OUT, and IN
1. Pick a few Bible verses to regularly pray over yourself and those in your DMC
You’ll be surprised how often these verses seep into your daily life, causing prayer to spring up in the smallest moments. It might feel a little awkward at first, but once you get in the habit of going back to the same verses time and time again, they become second nature. A few examples to get you started:
2. Join a few others in your group to take a prayer walk through each other’s neighborhood.
Take note of anything of interest; churches or other places of worship, significant businesses, the socioeconomic status of the community, or the diversity of its residents. Then, mark these places on a map (either printed or a saved Google Map) to help you understand better what God might want you to pray for the neighborhood. Put this map in a physical or digital space where you will be sure to see it often and pray!
3. Use the Waha app to gain better insight into what Scripture says about prayer.
The app has a topical study on Prayer, which you and your DMC can go through. Each week will give you a clearer understanding of prayer and, since the Waha app is built around implementation, you’ll begin putting everything into practice.
4. Make a prayer calendar
The Waha Disciple Making Course shares a powerful strategy to multiply prayer, which originally comes from the disciple makers at Contagious Disciple Making. Choose one person to pray for each day of the month. Whenever it’s their day to be prayed for, text, call, or email them asking for ways you can pray, and then do that. After a while, ask if they would mind praying for the people you are reaching out to as well. Imagine 30 people praying for your community every month! But it gets even better. Oftentimes, the people on your prayer calendar will become interested in what you are doing. That creates an opportunity for you to share how they can create a prayer calendar of their own. You will have gone from 30 people praying to 60 people praying. Imagine if just 3 people on your prayer calendar make their own prayer calendar. That’s 120 people praying every month. And what if 3 people from each of their prayer calendars start their own, too? Then you will be at 390! You can see how this multiplies for a great impact.
5. Host a prayer night with your DMC
It could be as simple as having everyone come with a prayer request and taking the evening to pray for those requests. You could also start close to home praying for families and then spread out to your city, country, and the countries of the world. Or you could take a chapter of Scripture, like a Psalm, and everyone takes a turn using one verse to inspire their prayer. There’s no need to overcomplicate things, so keep it fun and casual!
6. Use a simple flow with your prayers like : UP, OUT, and IN
Don’t know how to get started once people are gathered? Up, Out, In is a simple flow to guide you. Start by praying truths about God’s character (up). Then pray out: Lift up those in your DMC and anyone from your community. Finally, pray in. Ask God to fill you with the fruit of the spirit or inquire about a situation you’re dealing with, personally.
Conclusion
Any step towards including prayer in your Disciple Making Communities will align your hearts with the will of God and increase your vision for His desire that all might know Him. It will knit your hearts together and stir faith for God to move. May your prayers go up like pleasing incense to God on his throne (Psalm 141:2)!
Learn more about this topic and many others in the Waha Disciple Making Course. Sign up today!
Guest Post by Team Waha
