A Prayer Journey for the Places God Has Sent Us: My Home
During this prayer series, we are praying in widening circles from our own hearts to our homes, streets, relational networks, city, and ultimately the harvest Last week we began with our own hearts. This week, we widen the circle to our homes.
Along the way, we are asking God to help us pay attention, pray specifically, and recognize where he is already at work.
My Home: In the ordinary
Most of life with God happens in ordinary places.
It happens among the people we see again and again, in the routines we repeat, in conversations and meals, in moments of joy and tension, in the places where we rest and the places where we simply live our everyday lives. Whatever “home” looks like for you right now, it is one of the places where your life with God is actually being lived.
In Deuteronomy 6, Moses describes a life with God that is woven into these ordinary rhythms. Loving God isn’t reserved for particular moments or spiritual activities. It happens when we sit and when we walk, when we lie down and when we get up.
So before we pray for our streets, networks, or city, we are going to pay attention to the people and rhythms closest to us. What might God already be doing right where you are? And what might he want to form there?
READ: Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Notice
Read Deuteronomy 6:4–9 again, paying attention to the ordinary rhythms Moses names: sitting at home, walking along the road, lying down, and getting up.
Now think about the ordinary rhythms of your own home. Who shares life there with you? What happens there day after day? Where do you see joy, connection, generosity, or love? Where is there stress, distance, hurry, loneliness, or tension?
Try not to think about the home you wish you had or what you think your home should look like. Bring your home as it actually is before God.
Ask God: What do you want me to notice about the people and relationships closest to me?
Take some time to listen. You may want to write down the names of the people in your home and anything God brings to your attention.
Pray for your home
Think about the people who share life with you. Take time to bring each person before God individually. Resist the temptation to begin with what you think needs to change about them. Instead, ask God to help you see each person with his eyes.
Where do you see God already at work in their life? What might they need from God right now? Where might they need encouragement, peace, courage, healing, wisdom, or a deeper awareness of God’s love?
Pray specifically for each person and for what God brings to mind.
Consider
Now consider your home as a whole. What would it look like for love for God to become more deeply woven into the ordinary rhythms of your life together? Where is there already life and flourishing that you want to thank God for? Where is there tension, distance, hurry, or something that feels stuck?
Ask God: What do you want to form in our life together? Is there any way you are inviting me to participate in that?
Respond
Pay attention to anything God has brought to mind. Is there a conversation you need to have, an encouragement you need to give, a rhythm you want to begin, or simply someone you want to love more intentionally? Talk with God about how you want to respond.
Pray for the network
Now widen your prayer beyond your own home. Pray for the homes and households that make up the Kansas City Underground.
Pray that our homes would be places where love for God is woven into the ordinary rhythms of life. Ask God to be present in our conversations, meals, celebrations, conflicts, comings and goings, and all the everyday moments that shape life together.
Pray for the different realities represented across our network, for marriages and families, children and parents, roommates and extended families, and those who live alone. Ask God to bring peace where there is tension, healing where there is hurt, connection where there is distance, and hope where life feels heavy.
Ask God to form our homes into places where his love is experienced and where the people closest to us can flourish.