Click on the order button below to download this Bible study course. This 8-session study looks at the many types of prayer practices. You'll receive a Bible-based guide for personal use or group discussion.

Overview

This study guide was designed to help a small community of people process, wrestle with, and apply the content of the book The Folly of Prayer. This study will help your small group deepen your intimacy with God and build community. It will also help you to love and serve the broken and hurting people outside of your small group.

Study 1 - Prayer as Guttural Groaning
Maybe there are times when we pray and don’t even know we’re praying, when the doubt and anguish are lodged so deep within us that we can’t find the words. In these situations, the groans themselves can become messy-eloquent offerings to God.

Study 2 - Prayer as Desperation
Prayer is rooted in need. One of the most common Biblical words to describe how humans communicate with God is the word “cry” or the phrase “cry out.”

Study 3 - Prayer as Mystery
Why does God seem to answer some prayers in a quick, tidy and even miraculous fashion; but then other prayers – which are just as sincere, God-honoring, and faith-inspired – seem to hit the ceiling and bounce back?

Study 4 - Prayer as Absence
It’s often in the deserts of life that God pours his deep satisfaction into our souls. But how does that make sense? How does unraveling suggest reconstructing? How does dryness lead to an infilling?

Study 5 - Prayer as a Long, Slow Journey
Immersing ourselves in the Bible’s view of patience will change our prayer life. While impatience strangles the roots of prayer before it sprouts, waiting on God provides the right soil for cultivating prayer.

Study 6 - Prayer as a Dangerous Activity
When we pray we also open our lives to the presence of the most powerful Person in the universe. And he’s good but he’s not tame. God is utterly undomesticated and at times incomprehensible.

Study 7 - Prayer as Paying Attention
Do we have more or less distractions in our lives today – or do we just use that as an excuse to be inattentive to spiritual matters?

Study 8 - Prayer as Feeling God’s Heartbeat
Throughout the ages Christian thinkers and spiritual guides have offered diverse definitions for contemplative prayer. It is “an intimate sharing between friends … taking time to frequently be alone with (God) who we know loves us.”

Total number of pages - 20 pages

Adapted from The Folly of Prayer: Practicing the Presence and Absence of God by Matt Woodley. Copyright(c) 2009 by Matt Woodley. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press PO Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.

You have permission to make up to 1,000 copies for use in your local church.