An hour of prayer as a family...

Last week our church offered a unique opportunity to the congregation. They called it a week of prayer. Basically you committed to an hour time slot where you would go to the church building and pray. There were different stations and prompts to guide you in your prayers and someone was there praying around the clock for a week straight.  We did the same thing last year and it was a powerful experience so I was excited to sign my husband and myself up.

Yesterday at 1:00 in the afternoon was our time only due to a miscommunication we didn't have a sitter for our girls.  So my husband says "Let's go pray as a family." "Are you crazy?" and "That's never going to work." were a couple of my responses.  But selfishly I wanted to go and I didn't want to ask my husband not to go and there weren't a lot of other options so we loaded this girls up in the car.  Let me remind you that my girls are 7, 3 and 2 years old. I grumbled all the way to church and as we waited in the car for the person before us to come out and let us in my 7 year old reminded us of how much she did not want to be there. "This is going to be soooo boring. I can't pray for an hour!" I was pretty sure she was right and that this was going go very badly.

I paraded the girls into church with a heavy heart and a bad attitude. We hung our coats and entered the prayer room and my breath was taken away.  The room was set up into stations and it was just beyond what I could imagine. At the first station there was music playing.  We were prompted to sing along and worship. It also talked about all the names of God. Prince of Peace, King of Kings, El Roi, Jehovah, Emmanuel, I Am....I could go on and on. We were prompted to write the one that held meaning for us onto a small chalkboard set on an easel, only it was full so the words had been extended onto the wall. The wall was full from top to bottom, left to right, it was absolutely breathtaking.  And well, David Crowder was playing so my girls were okay hanging out at the station and singing along.

The next station was confession. I sat down with my oldest and asked her if she knew what confession meant.  She wasn't sure so I explained it as doing something you know you shouldn't be doing or sinning and then telling it to God and apologizing. She immediately started to cry. She confessed her sin to me and then together we wrote it on slip of paper with a special pen and nailed it to a cross.  Then there was a heat gun we used to blow over the words making them disappear.  I was able to tell her that that is what Jesus does for us when we confess our sin.  He wipes it away and makes us clean again.  It was a powerful visual to share with her.

Next was our identity in Christ. My girls loved this station because it was an area full of mirrors that had words written on them of who God says we are. Free, forgiven, loved, valued, strong, righteous....again I could go on and on.  We had each of them take turns sitting in front of the mirrors as we told them who God says they are.  We explained to them that they are God's girls; they were just entrusted to us for a short time here. 

Then came prayers for the workers of our church, our community and the churches in our area.  We let each of our girls draw a name from the fish bowl of someone who works or volunteers at our church and had each of them pray for the name on their paper.  Then we found a few of our oldest's friends in the phone book and prayed for them.  Then we prayed over all the churches in our area.

Next we prayed through art. There was a huge canvas and the girls were disappointed that it was so full, but people had been praying for about 160 hours at this point.  They were able to find a little room though.

The next station held a map of the world and people had circled areas and written messages about the areas they had prayed for.  We located some friends of ours in Spain and my sister-in-law in Seattle and circled those areas.  We prayed for their safety and protection. We prayed that God would use them to be salt and light where they are. And then we selfishly prayed that we'd be reunited soon. Our oldest noticed a comment written on the map that regarded us as aliens and I was able to explain to her that this (earth) is not our home.  We belong in heaven which makes us aliens and not from this world. 

The last station was meditation. By the time we got there we had just 10 minutes left of our hour.  We took the time to look around the room and reflect on all the different ways we had prayed. When we got home I was snuggling with my 3 year old who had been (normally) quiet. I asked if she liked going to church to pray and what her favorite part was; she replied with "I liked hanging my coat on the funny hook and I like praying with no words." At first I felt a little defeated by her answer but then I thought about the last part of her answer "I like praying with no words." Maybe she did get something out of it?

The rest of the evening passed pretty typically except that I overheard a lot more prayer happening among our girls.  "Oh, you hurt your finger? I'll pray for it." "Can I pray for your head?" "Will you pray for my arm?" And instead of saying our bedtime prayer together each of them wanted to pray individually.  "Thank you for this day. Thank you for mom and dad. Thank you for cheese..."  

Thank you for an hour of prayer with my family.

When I think of the wisdom and scope of his plan, I fall down on my knees and pray to the Father of all the great family of God—some of them already in heaven and some down here on earth— that out of his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you the mighty inner strengthening of his Holy Spirit. And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts, living within you as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love;  and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself. Now glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes. May he be given glory forever and ever through endless ages because of his master plan of salvation for the Church through Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 3:14-21 {TLB}