Adaptable meeting guide: How to pray

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THIS WEEK’S PASSAGE: Matthew 6:5-8

PREPARATION: It would be good to read the whole of Matthew chapters 6-7, alongside Luke 11, to give you a good understanding of Christ’s teaching on prayer. There is nothing in this session on the Lord’s prayer, but you could mention it as a template for prayer. You will need paper,
pens, a bowl and a chair.

DO YOU REALLY KNOW ME?

10 mins 

The exciting thing about prayer is that when it comes to talking to God, he knows us, he knows all about us. Psalm 139:1 says, ‘You have searched me Lord and you know me.’

Give everyone a pen and some paper and ask them to sit in a circle with a bowl in the centre. To start, everyone writes down one thing that they think no one knows about them (that they wouldn’t mind people knowing) and then place it in the bowl. After everyone has put one in the bowl, everyone pulls someone else’s piece of paper out. Go around the circle and one at a time the person reads the paper out loud and tries to guess who the paper belongs to. You get three tries to get it correct. The first person to guess three correct first wins. (The number of correct answers can change depending on size of group).

WHEN YOU PRAY

10 mins 

When Jesus talked about prayer, he said ‘when you pray’ not ‘if you pray’. Prayer was something that was expected of Christ’s disciples; it didn’t appear to be an optional extra. Jesus himself often withdrew and prayed. Communication and conversation with God is very much part of a Christian’s life, but how do we communicate? In groups discuss these questions:

• How much time do we spend on social media? What is our preferred social media platform and why?

• How much time do we spend in face-to-face conversation with each other? How much time do we think we actually spend talking with our parents, siblings and friends?

• What is the most satisfying form of communication?

FOCUS

5 mins 

If prayer is our means of communication with God we will need to give it some time and focus. To remain focused we need to remove distractions. Jesus advised finding a quiet place, shutting the door and withdrawing a little so that we could be properly focused on our conversation with God.

When we are on our own we can have so many thoughts crammed into our mind that it’s difficult to focus. Writing distractions down before and during a prayer time will help us put these to one side and enable us to focus more fully on our conversation with God.

Get one large sheet of paper and give everyone in the group a pen. Get them to write down all the things that may distract them as they pray.

DON’T BABBLE!

15 mins 

So we are on our own with a God who knows us and the distractions have been removed or at least dialled down: how then do we actually go about talking to God? Matthew 6:7 says, ‘And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.’ This verse is saying that prayer is best done simply and honestly. In fact prayer works best when we ‘keep it real’. No epic prayers needed - don’t babble! It’s best to keep it simple, keep it to whatever is in your head. What’s stressing you? What are you thankful for? What have you seen on the news that disturbs you? What are you worried about? What do you care about? Who do you care about? These are some of the things you can simply talk to God about.

You can start the conversation, say hi to God, some people like to start ‘Dear Lord’. Talk to him about whatever you want and then finish with a simple ‘Amen’, meaning ‘let it be so.’ If you only had 140 characters to write a prayer, what would it be like? Get the young people into groups of three and ask them to write prayers as tweets.

HAVE A PLAN

10 mins 

Richard Foster says: ‘We will never have pure enough motives, or be good enough, or know enough in order to pray rightly. We simply must set all these things aside and begin praying. In fact, it is in the very act of prayer itself - the intimate, on-going interaction with God – that these matters are cared for in due time.’ The key to praying is just to start doing it.

It might help if you had a plan or decided to set aside a certain amount of time each week to pray. Ask what people think is an acceptable time to start with. You could even encourage people to get with someone else once a week to pray.

LET US PRAY

5 mins 

As a final activity, give each person in the room a pen and some paper. Assure them that nobody will look at their paper, and they will not be made to do anything in front of the group. This is just between them and God. Have them write down one question they would ask God if he were here right now, two things that make them happy and three things that are stressing them out.

Now put a chair in the middle of the room and ask them to imagine God walking into the room and sitting in the chair. Have them whisper to themselves and God the things they wrote down. They can say it in any way they want, keeping it simple. Then time two minutes exactly, and ask them how they found it.