I love the challenge that God gives me each Monday evening to take women a ‘step deeper’. As Brennan Manning states, ‘…there is more power in sharing our weaknesses, than in sharing our strengths.’ This year, as I have been in the past, God is challenging me to pray for my ‘small church’. He is calling me to be a spiritual leader in their lives. Someone who challenges, encourages, and stretches them into what Ephesians calls, “mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit.”
I have invited women I’ve known for three years. Others I’ve only known for a short time and I find it difficult to know exactly how I should pray for them. Several mornings ago I started out with…bless our fellowship and bond each of these women together. I stopped. How one sided and flat was that for a small group leader with her own ‘small church’? I remembered a passage I had been reading earlier in the week in Ephesians. Take a moment and read Paul’s words in Ephesians 3:14-19.
When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of
everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he
will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home
in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep
you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should,
how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love
of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with
all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
I found that Paul had already placed his finger on the heartbeat of my small group. He eloquently describes how I need to pray for each of my women. This is the prayer God has laid on my heart for my ‘small church’.
o Write down the names of each woman in your group
o Individually insert each name as you pray
Lord,
May ________ capture a small glimpse of the wisdom and scope of your plan for her life.
Encourage_________ to daily fall on her knee’s remembering to communicate and spend time with You, her Creator.
Give ________an inner strength to handle conflicts today. Maybe tension with her spouse, or her family, or in her neighbors lives. Guide her as she seeks to make her home a peaceful one. Encourage her to seek guidance and counsel, and strengthen. Strengthen her desire to live in obedience to you.
May ________ allow Christ to inhabit her heart---more than she may dream possible, trusting in his acceptance of her.
May ________ sink her heart, mind, and soul deep into your love. Give her a desire to KNOW your love, TASTE your love, FEEL your love, and TOUCH your love in her own life and that of others.
Lord, give us all power to understand
How wide…the limitless of how you can work today in our lives.
How long…the length of how far you will search to find us.
How high…today, Jesus stands before the Father making intercession for us.
How deep…how everlasting and eternal your love is for us.
Challenge __________ to experience the love of God, though it is so great she’ll never fully understand it, and as a result she will be filled with the fullness of life and power for you.
Amen.
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