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Helping Girls Experience Prayer

One of the opportunities you have as a girls minister is helping girls and leaders develop their prayer times with Jesus whether corporately or personally.

One of the things I loved about being a girls minister was offering these unique prayer experiences that taught girls how to pray with scripture in different postures, groups, and environments.

And in doing so, I have loved watching girls create these unique experiences for and with their peers. There of course are guard rails that I would put in place. Here are two that are regular guard rails:

  1. Prayer Times have us anchored in His Word first. Whatever we are doing, we use His Word to help direct our praise, our thanksgiving, our petitions, our confession…etc.
  2. We do not force people to participate in any guided activity. If a student or adult would rather remain seated—that is fine.

Below is an example of a prayer experience that is guided from the stage with slides. I call this prayer experience: 1 to many prayer experience

How do you write your own prayer experience?

THE ANCHOR OF THE PRAYER EXPERIENCE: THE WHAT

First consider what scripture your experience will be anchored in. I do this, because if not, students or leaders get distracted by the logistics of the experience and forget what it was they were wanting to guide people to pray about. Start with the “WHAT”. What are we praying about? What are we guiding people to talk to Jesus about?

THE PRAYER ITSELF

  • Silent prayer
  • One-word prayer
  • Sentence or popcorn prayer
  • Written prayers
  • Prayers that you sing
  • Using biblical prayers where you pray someone else’s prayer
  • Prayer that is represented by a symbol (such as taking a rock and writing something on it and laying it down to symbolize a burden left at the altar) . . .

Above is a list of the delivery of the prayer experience.

THE CONTENT OF THE PRAYER

  • Prayers to Jesus about Thanksgiving
  • Prayers to Jesus about requests
  • Prayers to Jesus on behalf of others (intercessory prayer)
  • Prayers of repentance/confession
  • Prayers offering praise to Jesus
  • Prayers offering obedience or commitment

Above is a list of the content of the prayer.

GUIDED RESPONSE OR ACTIVITY IN THE PRAYER TIME

  • Solitary prayer
  • Group prayer
  • Prayer chain
  • Praying at the same time out loud.
  • Praying with a group but on my own
  • Praying with a group with all of us praying out loud one-at-a-time or all at once
  • Praying on a journey through various stations
  • Praying for people groups
  • praying with your eyes open.
  • praying through different postures…Stand up, sit down, raise your hand, place your hand on your heart, place your hand on the shoulder of the person on your right, stand up and pray a certain verse if you are a certain grade…etc.

These are just a few directions that help guide these experiences. I have a whole bunch of these if you need help or need ideas.

I’ll leave you with some prayer prompts I just did this week:

For a prayer prompt video go to: http://flow.page/amyjo