If I could get in a time machine and go back to teenaged Greg I’d tell him one thing…learn how to pray.
Sadly, it took me about four decades to begin to truly discover the power of prayer. Once I did, it felt like for the majority of my life I’d been throwing dirt clods at Satan only to discover there was a bazooka in the closet.
Now that I’m learning the power of prayer I can scream, “Say hello to my little friend” as I blast away at Satan’s strongholds in my life, church, community and nation! I can worship God and praise him for who he is and what he has done! I can intercede at Jesus’ side for both believers and unbelievers alike!
Oh how I wish I would have learned the art and science of prayer as a teenager! Instead, I followed the model of many of my leaders who used prayer more like holy water to sanctify their white board plans.
Instead it is a secret weapon to be aimed at the enemy of our souls. It is a largely untapped pipeline for both earthly and spiritual provisions straight from heaven’s limitless reservoirs to us!
So how do we teach our teens how to pray? Here are five ideas:
1. Pray often. Pray well. Pray now.
Make prayer part of the way you live and breathe. Pray with your teenagers. Pray for your teenagers. Pray in private and in public. Spend time pouring your heart out to God in prayer with teenagers. Let them overhear and participate in your intercession. Let them hear you pray so that they, just like the first disciples of Jesus, proclaim, “teach us to pray!”
2. Maximize desperate times.
There’s nothing like desperation to amp up our prayers of intercession, protection and supplication. If a teenager comes upon a desperate time (break up, parents divorce, bullied or stabbed in the back, etc.) use that time to teach them to pray. Get them journalling their prayers to God. Point them to the Psalms and show them how to cry out their prayers of “How long O Lord?” or “Why?” to the Father. And teach them how to pray through the frustration to faith…just like David did again and again throughout the Psalms.
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SOURCE: The Christian Post
Greg Stier
BCNN1 WP 