What an incredible gift it is to be able to boldly approach the throne of grace! What a high cost was paid for us to enjoy adoring him, expressing our hearts, giving thanks to him, petitioning for the world, and seeking to know God’s heart through direct communication with Him anywhere we are! Many of us know prayer is sacred and precious, but sometimes we struggle to know how to communicate to God, what to say to him, and even how prayer is important. Because prayer is essential to obey and abide in God, we wanted to share some resources to encourage, to challenge, to guide, and to excite you about time in prayer communing with God.
Books On Prayer
Prayer
By Timothy Keller
In his book, Tim Keller does much to stir our affections for God through prayer. Rich with Scripture and personal experiences, this book is both theological and practical and directs our focus to the importance of Kingdom and communion-centered prayers.
Does Prayer Change Things?
By R.C. Sproul
This book by R.C. Sproul is a brief and powerful resource filled with scriptural references to prayer that can help inform our prayers as well. It explains the model of The Lord’s Prayer as well as different types of prayer seen throughout the Old and New Testaments. Like the title suggests, it ultimately answers the question, “Does prayer change things?”
The Hour That Changes the World
By Dick Eastman
In his book, Dick Eastman divides an hour of prayer into 12 sections and spends 5 minutes on each. This may be a good place for beginning to lengthen your prayer times and providing ideas of what to pray for. In particular, this approach is inspired by Jesus asking the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane to watch and pray for one hour.
A Hunger for God
By John Piper
John Piper writes, “When God is the supreme hunger of our hearts, he will be supreme in everything.” In this book dedicated to prayer in relation to fasting, Piper takes a comprehensive, biblical approach to a heart fully exposed before the Lord that with loving motives can choose fasting and praying for the joy of obedience. This book is a great introduction and continual challenge to these disciplines that lead to desires as God himself becomes supreme in our hearts.
Prayers for Unreached People Groups Resources
Live Dead
Live Dead is a church-planting movement that exists to plant churches among unreached people groups through teams of missionaries. They have a variety of resources available including an app, their website, and several devotional and prayer books that lead people through Kingdom-minded prayers for unreached people groups. The app features a people group of the day and leads participants through 12 Scripture-based prayers to pray over each of these groups of people who have yet to see his Kingdom break through.
- App
- Website
- They also have a variety of other books and devotionals from missionaries such as:
- Live Dead Joy By: Dick Brogden
- In this devotional, missionary and cross cultural church planter, Dick Brogden, outlines a plan to read through the Bible and reflects on the passages as he leads readers through Kingdom prayers over unreached people groups each day of the year.
Joshua Project
Joshua Project is bringing definitive urgency to the unfinished task of making disciples of every tribe, every tongue, and every nation, as laid out for us by Jesus in his Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20. Their app and website are incredible resources referred to and used by mission agencies and strategists all over the world who are working together toward the goal of obedience to Jesus’ mandate. Joshua Project features an interactive map and a people group search tool, as well as global statistics on our progress and remaining goals.
Operation World
Operation World is another prayer guide for every nation. It includes information like primary religions, percentages of followers, progress of Bible translation, and current political climate. It also includes written prayers for believers, churches, missionaries and workers located in each country. The app includes a nation to pray for each day.
- App
- Website
- Book
Resources for Organizing Prayer
Echo Prayer
Echo is an app to help keep track of all that you want to pray for! With easy features such as notifications that go off as often as you would like and groups that share prayers with others, this app can help you organize and structure your prayer time.
Articles on Prayer
How Prayer Affects our Spiritual Formation
By Joe Carter
Teaching Children the Gospel in Everyday Prayers
By John Starke
The Most Important Prayer for Our Kids
By Christina Fox
Videos on Prayer
Russell Moore on The Lord’s Prayer
Every Home for Christ’s Teaching Videos
