DadU: Pray In Faith

Summary

In this session of DadU, Blake Holmes did a great job of asking and answering three hugely important questions about prayer, namely:

1. What prayer is: A conversation with our Heavenly Father.
2. What prayer reveals: What we believe about God, ourselves, and the world around us.
3. How to pray: Regularly, spontaneously, audibly, privately, reverently, honestly, intentionally, boldly, expectantly and biblically (just to name a few).

Over all of this, Blake left us with the Puritan admonition to "pray until you pray", taking our prayers out of rote repetition and routine to heartfelt pleas of desperate men. Our prayer is that as you consider what this looks like in your family and for your kids, you see opportunities for growth and will courageously take action to implement one or two things this month in the life of your family.

Call to Action

With that in mind, let us encourage you again to revisit the Family Discipleship Plan, specifically focusing this month on what you want your goals for prayer to be. Some things you might want to think through in this category would be:

• Areas of emphasis for your prayers for each of your children.
• Rhythms of regular prayer you want to develop personally.
• Rhythms of prayer you want to develop as a family.
• Specific areas of prayer for your heart as the leader of your family (i.e. how you want to ask God to change YOU).

As always, we want to encourage you to share these goals with your community group and seek their accountability for the things you hope to implement.

Resources

Blake and the panel mentioned a few resources you might want to consider for a deeper dive:

• Blake's sermon on The Lord's Prayer from earlier this year.
• Al Mohler's book, The Prayer That Turns the World Upside Down
• Tim Keller's book, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God
• David Platt's podcast, Pray the Word (short, 5 minute daily podcast of praying biblically).

As we head into the Christmas season, let us also remind you that the Watermark Family Advent Guide is a GREAT resource for getting in the Word as a family this Christmas season and for praying together as a family.

Model, Train, Pray, Trust

As a reminder, the primary role of every dad is that of a disciple maker, and the primary goal we have as dads is our own faithfulness before the Lord -- faithful to MODEL our faith, TRAIN in truth, PRAY in faith, and TRUST the Lord with the results. Our hope is that this session of DadU bears fruit of faithfulness in your prayer life with and for your family.