5 Things to Pray for Your Church

The Puritan William Gurnall once said: ‘Prayer is nothing but the promise reversed or God’s word turned inside out and formed into an argument and retorted back again upon God by faith.’ It sounds great. But what does it look like in practice? 5 Things to Pray for the People You Love and 5 Things to Pray for Your Church answer that question. They’ll walk you through using God’s word in prayer. And praying God’s word is my number one tip to help people invigorate their prayer life. So read these books and invigorate your prayers. | Five Things is a brilliantly simple but hugely effective means of stimulating your prayer life for church, mission, family and friends. Accessible and attractive, with lots of Scripture to focus prayer, it will be a great tool for churches to help members to pray regularly and creatively | I recommend this series to you on basis of the simple fact that they moved me to pray. They both showed me ways to pray for my church and my loved ones and they kindled in my heart a want to pray. These are simple books, with the modest and eternally profound aim to show how the Bible informs our prayers. Rachel Jones manages the difficult work in withdrawing from the picture and leaving the reader to see how simple it is to align our prayers with the will of our listening Father. These books could well be a cause of great blessing for your church and people you love. | For those of us who often struggle to know what to pray for our church and for the people we love, these books are brilliant at giving us lots of really helpful, specific things to pray that are straight from God's word. With a mixture of praise, confession, thanksgiving and petition the prayers are repeatedly focussed on what it looks like to live in the light of eternity in the various different situations that are highlighted. Starting with scripture really helpfully ensures that we are not praying merely for changed circumstances, as we can tend to do, but rather for changed hearts that bring honour and glory to God. | Rachel has just put together something delightfully simple and useful: taking 21 Bible verses or paragraphs, she has turned each into sets of five short guided intercessions for the church and published it as a little 90-page paperback. The spread of biblical material means there’s a good balanced diet of praise, thanksgiving, confession, and supplication. | If you feel like your prayer life could do with a bit of support, a bit of inspiration or input, then you’ve only got the price of a pint to lose: get this book and give it a go. I’d imagine it would also be great to give away to a church small group, or perhaps to some of the leaders in your church as they consider what it looks like to partner in prayer for the church. | I really liked this book. I liked it’s variety. … Most of all I liked that because all the examples of prayers to pray are taken from God’s Word, using this book leads you to pray for the things that God actually wants to you to pray.Here’s a book worth placing in the hands of every church member. | Rachel Jones is the author of A Brief Theology of Periods (Yes, Really), Is This It? and several books in the award-winning Five Things to Pray series, and serves as Women's Ministry Lead at King's Church Chessington, in Surrey, UK.