Inner life prayer station

Who are you Holding?

• Who are you holding up?

• Write the names of the individuals on the hands and add them as leaves to the tree.

• What does your heart long for?

What are you Holding?

• What are you holding up?

• Write the situations on the hands and add them as leaves to the tree.

• What does your heart long for?

Fallen • What leaves have fallen?

• Have you grieved?

• Are you paralysed in the grief process?

• What is your heart’s desire?

• What leaves need to fall?

• Can you allow them to fall?

• Can you grieve?

• What is your heart’s desire?

What is holding you?

The Word With numerous translations of the bible available to help our understanding, we may reflect on what William Booth Said shortly after the Revised Version had been introduced in 1881: ‘I want to see a new translation of the bible into the hearts and conduct of living men and women. I want as improved translation – or transference it might be called – of the commandments and promises and influence of this Book to the minds and feelings and words and activities of the men and women who hold it to be an inspired book, and the only authorised rule of life.’

Quoted in Called to be God’s people-Robert Street

What is holding you?

Blessedness ..our true identity does not lie in our performance or productivity; but in the fact that we are God’s beloved children and that we do not need to earn or maintain his favour by what we do. ( We need ) to let our being become the ground of our doing, and work from a place of spiritual rest, where we know that our acceptance with God is secure and not dependent on what we do or don’t do, and where we minister out of a true awareness of who we are, not from an image we project. For me personally, the discovery of my own blessedness has been one of the greatest blessings of my Christian life, transforming my relationship with God and the way I serve him .

Tony Horsfall – Mentoring for Spiritual Growth

What is holding you?

A relationship?

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Draw a picture to describe your relationship with God at this time, being as honest as you can. We are not looking for a great work of art but something that allows you to express what is in your heart.

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Now draw a second diagram to show what you would like your relationship with God to look like.

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Notice the difference between the two diagrams. How do you account for the gap between the reality and what might be? Think about this for a while. What are the factors in your life that work against a closer relationship with God?

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Write a simple prayer that expresses your longing to move from the first diagram to the second

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What action can you take that will work towards a closer relationship with God?

Tony Horsfall – Mentoring for Spiritual Growth

What is holding you?

Prayer

Howard Baker was actively involved in youth ministry, energetically throwing himself into his work and committed to it 100%. The one day, out of the blue, he woke up to the cold reality of his inner life. He realised he felt frustrated and angry at the meagre results he was seeing for all his hard work. He began to admit that he was afraid of close relationships and that much of his motivation for service was his need to be successful and appreciated. The painful awareness dawned on him that he had lost his spiritual fire, and that he had lost his soul to the chief rival of true devotion to Jesus – Christian activity…..’So here I was,’ he wrote, ’a Christian man, a guy working in Christian service, faced with a growing deadness inside’ (Howard Baker – Soul Keeping quoted in Tony Horsfall – Mentoring for Spiritual growth)

To attempt to do God’s work without his guidance, without his strength, without his love, is to attempt the impossible.

To what extent is our lifestyle an honest reflection of the prayers we speak?

Called to be God’s people -Robert Street

Who is holding you?

Journeying together The vitality of our spiritual life is enhanced by our accountability to each other, and when we practice the discipline of accountability our spiritual vision becomes objective, our decisions more balanced, and we gain in wisdom and the means to clarify and test our own thinking.

Called to be God’s people – Robert Street

Spend some time thanking God for those who have journeyed with you.

Dwell on the fruit in your life seeded in those relationships.

Who travels with you now?

Who is holding you?

Intercessors Definition intercession noun : pleading, prayer, intervention, plea, mediation, advocacy, entreaty, supplication.

Who is praying for you?

Thank God for those who have promised to pray for your ministry.

Are there those who you can share your heart with so that they can be focused in the pleas?

Do you need to broaden your network – that you may ‘guard your heart’?

Call to the inner life The inner life sustains the outer life. In a fast paced culture alive with high speed technologies and bursting with opportunities for involvement, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the external world of activity is all that there is. Spiritually minded people however know that the real action takes place in the unseen realm in which prayer is offered, faith is exercised and God is at work……(we need to be) called back to the truth that the inner life needs to be acknowledged, strengthened, and cared for. ….The more we are involved in the busyness of daily life, ..in service to others, the more we need to take care of our own inner selves.

This is permission to slow down, a setting of stillness and an opportunity to reflect and think more deeply about what is happening to us, where we are going, and whether we are living in accordance with our true values. It says in Proverbs 4:23, ‘Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the well spring of life’

Tony Horsfall – Mentoring for Spiritual Growth

What are you holding?

Who are you holding ?

What is holding you?

Who is holding you?

Proverbs 4:23

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the well spring of life

Proverbs 4:23

What are you holding?

Proverbs 4:23

Who are you holding?

Proverbs 4:23

Who is holding you?

Proverbs 4:23

What is holding you?