The Advocate & Pray posts on this blog are our most consistent and lasting feature. What kind of orphan care and adoption blog wouldn’t want to raise awareness for individual children in addition to discussing orphan care in more general terms? The very first post was about Aris, a deaf and mute little girl in Ethiopia. Of all the children shared, Aris is the one that rests most consistently on my heart and enters my prayers most frequently.
Which brings me to the point of this post. Prayer. Prayer is a word that gets batted around a lot, but is rarely given the attention, focus, or esteem it should be. Because of that, I’ll be making several posts about prayer this month.
One of the features of the bi-weekly Advocate & Pray posts is a prayer chain. The point of these is to wrap each particular child in daily prayer for the two weeks they are featured on the blog. Praying is an orphan care opportunity wide open to ever age group and demographic, and it’s one of the most important ministries you could apply yourself to.
So how do the prayer chains work? Let me walk you through the process.
This week’s Advocate & Pray child is Felicia. (She’s got an awesome smile in her profile pictures!)
- Start the process by reading about her and learning as much as you can from the limited information available. For example, Felicia is learning to stand on her own, is only partially sponsored, and needs a wheelchair. These are all things you can pray for.
- Click on the prayer chain link. This will bring you to a spreadsheet divided into time slots. Right now each 24 hour day is divided into 15 minute segments. Starting next week, we plan to reduce it to hour long segments to make the spreadsheet cleaner and less overwhelming.
- Sign up! Type your name into a slot to make a commitment to pray for the child for the next two weeks (or whatever remains of the child’s two week focus on TIO). NOTE: You don’t have to pray for the full time. You are simply committing to pray for the child sometime during your slot. Feel free to customize it. If 7pm works for you every day except Thursday because you have orchestra practice on Thursday, type something like “Leah Good, every day except Thursday.”
- Pray! Be diligent to pray for that child every day during your time slot for the period of time you signed up for. Keep your eyes open for another post offering ideas on how to pray for someone you know so little about.
- BONUS POINTS: Ask your friends and church to pray for the Advocate & Pray children too.
Do you have any questions about how this is supposed to work? Any suggestions for making it better?
P.S. Thank you so much to the 5 people currently signed up to pray for Felicia. This is the best week we’ve had in a while. 🙂
Teens Interceding for Orphans 
Spencer R.
/ March 6, 2015This is a great idea, Leah. I had no idea you were doing this. I will definitely look into it!
Leah E. Good
/ March 6, 2015Thank you, Spencer!
Amanda Beguerie
/ March 6, 2015This is great Leah! Can I add something? When I first heard about the prayer chains, I thought that it would be bad to join when it was already a week past the start point. So I didn’t start right away. But it’s truly okay to sign up a few days late if you have to; if you didn’t hear about it until later, join and pray anyway! These kids need all the prayer they can get! 🙂
Leah E. Good
/ March 6, 2015Yes, by all means. Join at whatever point you can!
Amanda
/ March 6, 2015It’s a good point that you don’t have to sit there for fifteen minutes (or an hour starting next week) trying to think of what on earth you could pray for the child. I think mentioning that will help prevent some freak-outs, LOL. 🙂
I would recommend to the people who aren’t sure they will remember to pray: Try setting a reminder or alarm on your phone, watch, computer, etc. Or pick a time of day when you know you’re in between tasks, like just before or after lunch. You could also try taping a note where you’ll be in the time period. 🙂
Annie Rudenberg
/ March 9, 2015Thanks, for running the prayer chain. I joined for the first time this week. I’ve found that a good way to make I pray for the child is to tack it onto my normal prayer time. I like to select a bible passage, just a verse or two, and pray that for the child.
Leah E. Good
/ March 9, 2015Thanks so much for participating, Annie! Praying Bible verses is one of my favorite methods. I’ll be doing a post about it soon.