Crazy Prayer

These prayers have actually been prayed by some of my students over the years:

"God help all the dead people and their families"

"Jesus, help my sister not be upset over the hurt teddy bear"

"Thanks man for doing that thing you did"

"Father, please make sure we don't get eaten by bears or fall off any cliffs" (Out trip with Camp)

Now there have been a lot of occasions when my students have prayed and I have cracked up because they are such funny things, and there have been times when I have been frustrated because I haven't thought students were taking prayer very seriously. But one thing I have always had to keep in check is that my students are praying and slowly building an understanding about communicating with God.

Recently however I challenged our students on one thing and it has made a huge difference in the prayer life of our ministry. It started out with a small group meeting and a bunch of the kids were goofing around when it came prayer time and when I shared that everyone was going to take a turn praying a bunch of groans came out. That's when it happened; my wife was helping lead this particular week and just turned to the girls and let them know we needed to be serious because we were talking to God in heaven and we were approaching the king of the universe.

So I decided to teach on prayer on Sunday and we focused on the God we are talking to. We began to talk about how when we are praying we are actually coming before the throne of God and what that would be like. Our students then started to get excited and really understand what it was like to be in the presence of God.

Since then a bunch of students have been praying very different prayers. We have had prayers for healing of sick friends and family, prayers for God to move in mourning and prayers to change our schools, our city, and our world to bring glory to God.

How is your prayer life coming? How is your ministries prayer life? Are you stepping into the presence of God and praying crazy good prayers.

-Kyle