Prayer Projects

A powerful part of our program at the Institute of Spiritual Formation is prayer projects. They are assigned weekly as an hour a prayer where we intentionally address specific areas of our formation with God. There are usually 4-5 questions to provoke reflection. At the end we journal what God has done in the time which helps to integrate and reflect on the experience.

Though one can learn these things apart from a project like these, this is an intentional way of encountering the living God through personal life. This has begun to shaped our prayer lives in a few ways:

Establishes Past as a Work of God:
Re-examining our lives with the Spirit of God often brings up unplanned things, also it establishes our past as a work of God (we often assume He hasn't participated in our past, other than allowing it!), and grants divine significance to seemingly ordinary moments.

Starts Prayerful Conversation:

One of the greatest obstacles in prayer happens when we present God with the image of ourselves we want Him to see, rather that who we really are in truth. Praying over areas of our lives opens us to conversation with God. These types of conversations intensify His relevance and involvement in our daily lives.

Living with the Living God:

As we talk with Him, we learn to live with Him. This gives us immediate experiential access to His truths from scripture. We learn to discern His voice from our own (and other competing voices in the world). And as we experience His love, we also experience Him lifting sin, shame and guilt off our shoulders in truth.

*We will post the prayer projects for our Spring semester for the next few weeks, please join us if you'd like in praying over these areas of life!

Here is Prayer Project #1

One Hour:

a.            Present yourself to the Lord.  What is in your heart these days?  (15 min)

b.            What did you hope your journey would be as you started following Christ?  What were you hoping for?  What was your roadmap?  (15 min)

c.            What has the Spirit done in you since coming following Christ?  What has your journey been?  (15 min)

d.            Be open to the Lord and listen.  What comes up?  (15 min)