New Prayer Course for Non-prayers

The new, free Prayer Course from Alpha has taken New Zealand by storm, with several Salvation Army corps taking up the challenge.

New Zealand is third in the world for downloads of The Prayer Course—bettered only by the UK and USA. Jonathan Hesp, director of Alpha NZ, has been taken by surprise at the response. ‘It’s simply been word of mouth, and it’s taken off and resonated, because people want a deeper relationship with God, and this happens through prayer.’

So why is Alpha—arguably the world’s most popular gospel course—turning its focus onto prayer? ‘Prayer undergirds everything we do,’ says Jonathan. ‘At Holy Trinity Brompton [where Alpha began] they were praying for revival across the UK. Alpha I believe expanded as a result of those prayers.’ Yet, he acknowledges that as individuals and as a Church we may struggle with prayer, with many people tiring of the traditional formulas.

With the ease of downloading videos, Alpha is generously giving the course away free. ‘Our heart with Alpha has always been that we don’t want people to pay for the gospel,’ says Jonathan. People simply have to register for the course at www.prayercourse.org.

One of the trailblazers of the course in New Zealand is Sydenham corps officer Sammy Millar, who began courses in both Upper Hutt and Christchurch.

‘One of our corps goals [at Sydenham] is to intensify our prayer lives as individuals and as a church family,’ explains Sammy. ‘Some people had never thought to pray for themselves; they thought they should only pray for others. Other people found that they can connect with God in more creative ways.’

One person who attended had been involved in some occult activity as a young person, and was able to have prayer that lifted off burdens they had felt captive to.

Sammy’s own highlight was a session where they explored different ways of praying. They decided to all lift their voices in prayer at once, which is the practice is many Asian countries where Christianity is growing strongly. ‘It was really powerful and exciting,’ recalls Sammy. At Sydenham Corps, the Prayer Course kicked off a week of 24/7 Prayer, and it was exciting to see prayer slots fill up.

In Queenstown, corps officer Captain Karen Baker has also run the Prayer Course, and was so impressed that the corps is now incorporating it into the Sunday Morning preaching schedule. ‘It demystified prayer for people and reaffirmed that prayer is real,’ says Karen.

One of the sessions focused on listening to God, and this was put into practice by one person who, on the way to the course, felt they should stop for a man parked on the side of the road. Once they had safely taken the man home, they carried on to the course!

In Upper Hutt, the youth have taken up the prayer challenge. ‘It was really powerful to see our young people praying for each other,’ says youth pastor Scott Keane.

The Prayer Course is led by Pete Greig, founder of the 24/7 Prayer movement and author of God on Mute, which deals with unanswered prayer. ‘Our vision is to grow in relationship with Jesus, and the way to grow in relationship is prayer—it’s talking to God, just like we talk to our spouse to stay close to them,’ he says.

The course borrows its structure from the famous Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), which Jesus gave as an example of how to pray to our heavenly father. Jesus used a famous rabbinical prayer, which went: Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come, your will be done.

Where Jesus’ prayer differs is that he makes it personal: he gives us permission to ask for our ‘daily bread’, to ask for and offer forgiveness, and to receive God’s spiritual protection.

‘The disciples who asked, “Lord, teach us how to pray”, when Jesus gave them the Lord’s Prayer, went on to have incredible prayer lives,’ says Pete—adding that if these disciples could learn how to pray, so can we.  

The prayer course is broken into six parts:

Adoration: Pete tells the story of spending the day creating a swing set for his two boys. At the end of the day he went into the house exhausted and said, ‘Go forth and enjoy the swings!’ Both boys ran out immediately, but one turned back and crawled onto his lap and said, ‘I missed you, Daddy.’ ‘I didn’t love him more for that, and it would have been fine if he had just run out and started playing. But that moment just ministered to my heart,’ says Pete. By showing adoration, we have the opportunity to minister to the heart of God.

Petitioning: This simply means asking God for things. It’s the most instinctive, basic form of prayer—and God actually invites us to articulate our needs to him. God calls himself our father, and tells us he wants to give us good gifts. ‘There are endless problems in our world, but from time to time I still give my children chocolate when they ask for it. Our father in heaven sometimes gives us our wants, as well as our needs,’ Pete says.

Intercession: Intercession is not just for spiritual heavyweights. It just means you care about other people and situations, and you ask God for things they need. The night that the Berlin wall fell in Germany, 300,000 people were in prayer vigils around the city.

Perseverance: Incredibly, Jesus himself lives with unanswered prayer—he prayed that the Church would be united, and that has not yet happened. Disappointment and suffering are part of the Christian journey. There may be three potential reasons for unanswered prayer: God’s world (the laws of nature and logic), God’s will (he knows best), and God’s war (spiritual resistance to the will of God). ‘The Bible teaches us there are things in this world that God does not want to happen. Sometimes we’ll lose the battle, but we do not grieve as those who have no hope, because there is a Heaven and ultimately, God wins,’ says Pete.

Listening: The Bible says we’re designed to walk and talk with God. It’s normal to hear God’s voice; it’s abnormal to be deaf to it. When we demand a word or sign from God, he rarely obliges. We need to slow down. When a lake becomes perfectly still, it can reflect the moon. We need only be still.

Warfare: The Bible is 100 per cent clear that we are in a spiritual battle and our fight is not ‘against flesh and blood’. Our focus should always be on Jesus—it is perfect love that casts out fear. ‘ABC’ can be a helpful tool for spiritual warfare: A is authority: Jesus said, ‘It is finished’ on the cross, he has already won the battle. B is blessing: pray good things into people and situations, rather than praying the bad out of them. C is for common sense: there may be a practical or medical explanation. ‘The greatest gift God can give us is common sense,’ says Pete.

Register for the prayer course at www.prayercourse.org