Prayer Is...

Help your disciples understand the reality of prayer, the power that is found in it, and the presence of the Lord that is available through it

Use the tools, sermons, scriptures and practical steps to grow habits of prayer in your life and to push others in your group to grow in their prayer habits. Remember to come to D-Group having already gone through the content so that you can spend the majority of your time holding each other accountable, discussing the content, and spending time in prayer!

Session 0: Expectations and Testimonies

Today’s Session

DISCLAIMER: This may look like a lot to go through, but if this is your first time engaging in a D-Group here at Fielder, it is highly encouraged that you take the time to process all of this before starting!

In this first session, you’ll spend time getting to know each other. Here’s an outline of what to expect:

  1. Review the Discipleship Group purpose and guidelines below.
  2. Read, discuss, and agree to the Discipleship Group Commitment Form.
  3. Share your faith story.
  4. Pray for one another.
  5. Plan your next meeting.

Purpose

The purpose of the Discipleship Group is simple: to learn what it means to grow in deeper obedience to Jesus so that we can more effectively inhale the Gospel, exhale the Gospel, and make disciples who do the same.

With that being said, let me tell you what it isn’t. This is not simply another Bible study or prayer group. In this group, you will study the Bible, you will pray, and you will have accountability, but God’s vision for this experience is much greater than any individual component. His goal is nothing other than the production of missionary leaders who have a radical love of God and an incomprehensible love for those He has placed around them. But how do Discipleship Groups accomplish this? Discipleship Groups do two things that help produce missionary leaders:

  1. Train you to be a disciple

If you are in a New Disciple curriculum, the goal is for you to be established in your understanding of who Jesus is, what it means to follow Him, and how to walk in obedience to His commands. This establishing is crucial to the rest of your life as a disciple of Jesus. Everything that God wants to do in you and through you will be based on this foundation that He is establishing in you through Bible reading, prayer, accountability, serving, and learning to share your faith.

If you are in a Growing Disciple curriculum, the goal is for you to be equipped to do the work of the ministry that God has called you to do. Our faith was never meant to be kept to ourselves, but to be used to be a blessing in the world around us. God has called you out of darkness into light so that you might be sent back into a dark world with the power of the Holy Spirit to redeem and save. This curriculum will give you the tools that you need to live your faith out loud, to find freedom from sin, and to make an impact in the world around you with the gifts that God has given you. This is an ongoing process that lasts for the rest of your life!

  1. Train you to make disciples

Jesus’ final command to His disciples was not simply to be disciples but “to make disciples of all nations…” That means our journey does not end once we become growing disciples who are equipped to do the work of the ministry, we are commanded by our Savior King to be disciple-makers! Multiplying Disciple curriculum will help export you; to take what you know about what it means to follow Jesus and pour into the next generation of disciple-makers, whether that’s here at Fielder, across the globe, or somewhere in between! If you want to be obedient to Jesus then that means you need to step into the journey of making disciples who make disciples.

Now that you know why we’re here (to either establish, equip, or export you), let’s dive into what this group is practically going to look like!

General Guidelines

The four major values in the DGs are authenticity, teachability, confidentiality, and dedication. Each person is asked to commit to live by these values during the DG experience.

  1. Every person must choose authenticity over comfort. The more real you are, the more you give God space to deal with areas of growth in your life.
  2. Every person must choose teachability above self-confidence. The more you approach this thinking, the more you have the answers, and the less you will see your need to change (and consequently, the less you will!). Our goal is to be teachable during this process, giving God space to let us shape each other.
  3. Confidentiality – what is said during the meeting stays in the meeting. If you are married, this includes speaking with your spouse about things that are discussed by other members. If this guideline is breached, authenticity suffers.
  4. Dedication – due to the intensity of the experience, each person must dedicate themselves to do 4 things: pray for each other, do all the assigned curriculum, prepare for each meeting by answering all questions in advance, and make attendance at the meetings a priority.

D-Group Extras

This curriculum is not meant to be all-encompassing for everything that you need to be a healthy Christian but a tool that you can use in tandem with other tools so that you can grow as a disciple who makes disciples. On top of this curriculum, you should also be using the below resources to make sure that you are as healthy as possible:

  • Bible Memorization tools
    • Writing scripture on our hearts helps us combat temptation, minister to people better, and grow more in love with Jesus. Find a scripture memorization tool that your group likes and commit to memorizing scripture throughout your time together. You can use the apps/books listed below to start!
  • Join a Community Group and start serving!
  • Bible Reading Plan
    • Since the purpose of being in a D-Group is to grow in more obedience and likeness to Christ, then spending time with Him through the Word is essential to your growth. We encourage you to start a Bible reading plan with your group to hold each other accountable to spending time with Jesus through scripture and help one another understand the commands and promises that God is speaking over you. You can find Bible reading plans on the Fielder Website by clicking here!

Discipleship Group Meeting Flow

Almost every discipleship group curriculum that Fielder offers follows the same formula and contains the same components. This ensures that no matter what you are learning, it is being taught in a familiar and uniform way. The time spent on each section is dependent on the shepherd’s leadership and the needs of the group, but the average D-Group meeting should generally follow the flow below. The components of a Discipleship Group will often include:

Prayer(10 minutes) – A time to spend time with the Father together, offer up prayer requests, and pray for the non-believers in your lives.

Accountability(25 minutes) – Hold each other accountable to your Bible reading goals, regular prayer times, confession and repentance of sin, and action steps based on the last D-Group session.

Intentional Learning (55 minutes) – This will include:

  • Overview (5 minutes) – Recap of the curriculum that was assigned to the group
  • Discussion (20 minutes) – Questions that are geared towards diving deeper into what God is revealing to you through the curriculum. Use this time to answer how you understand what God is trying to say to you through the curriculum. Don’t try to give the “right” answer, give your answer to the questions.
  • Model/Practice (15 minutes) – An opportunity to put what you have learned into action in a safe environment. Whether it’s role-playing a scenario that you might encounter in the world around you, participating in an activity together, or praying that God would move, this is vitally important for getting what you learned from your head down to your heart.
  • Action Steps (15 minutes) – Every D-Group member will share what they will do before the next D-Group meeting to build on what they learned in the curriculum and what they confessed and repented of during accountability.

Prayer and Accountability

Prayer and accountability are essential components of Discipleship groups. The prayer and accountability time allotted in your meeting is not just there so you can share. It’s not just there as a checklist to make sure you are doing the right things. It’s there to help you sharpen each other and grow in every area of life as you Inhale and Exhale the gospel!

 For each session, you will select two questions within the D-Group Accountability Questions document that reflect areas of victory in your life and two questions that reflect areas of struggle and discuss them with the group. Please spend time before the meeting determining these areas so that you will be prepared to share.

Shepherds have the option to help push the rest of the group deeper in accountability. If more areas need to be discussed, feel free to move beyond the questions selected by the group member.

Intentional Learning Guidelines

Intentional learning is an essential part of D-Groups at Fielder. Much of this learning takes the form of reading the Bible, helpful books, articles, and blogs, and watching helpful videos, sermons, and podcasts. Here are a few tips that we have found to be helpful: 

  1. Take notes while you read/watch. Underline important thoughts, put a star or some indication next to new, important ideas, and write frequently in the margins as your thoughts come.
  2. Pick out the 5 most influential thoughts or concepts (Top 5) from your assigned curriculum and record them in your journal.
  3. Carve out 10 minutes every day in your schedule that will allow you to spend time reading/listening and journaling your takeaways.
  4. To assist you in reading the assigned scripture passages, we provide a guide called The Gospel Method to help you grow in your love and understanding of God through reading and studying the Bible. Take time during your first session to go over the method as a group and pray that it gives you guidance on how to hear God’s voice more clearly as you read scripture.

Facilitate Leadership

After the first few sessions, you should begin to rotate the facilitator of each session to give each person in the group a chance to lead. Each of you will be asked to eventually lead a Discipleship Group once you have gone through the Discipleship Cycle.

Once you go through the Discipleship Cycle, or when the shepherd of the group recommends, you should begin to lead 3 new people through a D-Group of your own. 

Commitment Form

Click here to download and print the Discipleship Group Commitment Form. By signing this, you are ensuring that everybody in the group is bought into the vision and purpose of this Discipleship Group. This helps you trust one another as you confess and repent of sin, share prayer requests, and challenge each other to walk in Christlikeness.

Faith Stories

Share Your Faith Story

Take turns sharing your faith story using the outline below. 

  1. Tell about what life was like before Jesus was Lord of your life. (even if you grew up in a Christian home, there should be a moment where Jesus became the one sitting on the throne of your life instead of you. Describe what that “before time” was like!)
  2. Tell how you were introduced to Jesus Christ and the events surrounding your acceptance of Him as your personal Savior and Lord.
  3. Tell how you have grown spiritually since your conversion and what God is doing in you at the moment.

Prayer

Everyone shares one area that you are asking for God to move in your life. 

After each person shares, the group should pray for them.

Prayer is Intimacy with the Father

Prayer Request/Time in Prayer 

  • How can we pray for you?  
  • During this time, don’t focus on the prayer needs of others in your life, we want to pray for you.

Accountability

Learning

  • Main Idea

Prayer is first and foremost a means of being with our true treasure, our Heavenly Father. Christ died so we could be restored into a right relationship with God. When we view prayer like this, we discover we don’t need answers or things as much as we need God.

  • Content
  • Discussion
    • Why don’t we pray as we should? What are some obstacles or excuses that come to mind when we think about why we don’t spend regular quality time in prayer? List some examples.
    • How do most people view God? How does seeing God as our loving heavenly Father change our perspective about prayer?
    • If you could change one thing about your prayer life, what would it be? Why?
  • Practice
    • Take some time for everybody to decide a time where they would spend personal time with the Lord. This is not a time for study or connection with other people, this is a time to grow in intimacy with our Father. Make sure each person has a daily time of undistracted connection with God.
    • Map out what that time could look like. Whether that is just prayer or if it has a combination of reading, journaling, walking, or some other activity that could be used to help them connect with the Father.
    • Spend some time in prayer before your group time ends. Focus on the connection with the Father as the thesis of your prayers.

Plan

  • Take some time to write down all of the responses that each group member said for their plans to spend intimate time with the Father in your journals.
  • Make a plan for how to hold each other accountable throughout the week for spending intimate time with the Lord.

 

Conclude

Prayer is Power of Forgiveness

Prayer Request/Time in Prayer 

  • How can we pray for you?  
  • During this time, don’t focus on the prayer needs of others in your life, we want to pray for you.

Accountability

Learning

  • Main Idea

Jesus promised that when we ask for anything in prayer it will be ours.  When we ask for the power to forgive, he gives it to us.  He empowers us through prayer to freely forgive those who have harmed us, understanding that Jesus took on the harm of our sin on the cross to not just forgive us, but also give us the power to forgive. 

  • Content
  • Discussion
    • Why do we find it hard sometimes to forgive others who have wronged us or hurt us?
    • What is the difference between forgiving and forgetting? Is it necessary to forgive and forget?
    • How can you keep short accounts of forgiveness with people in your life? What must you do to be a quick forgiver? 
  • Practice
    • Take some time to journal a list of people that you need to forgive and haven’t yet and a list of people that you need to ask forgiveness of.
    • Spend some time in prayer together, thanking God for the forgiveness that He has given you, asking Him for the strength to forgive others as you have been forgiven.

Plan

  • Share with the group the name of one person on your list that God is convicting you to forgive. Ask them to hold you accountable to have a conversation with that person before the next time you Discipleship Group meets.

Conclude

Prayer is War

Prayer Request/Time in Prayer 

  • How can we pray for you?  
  • During this time, don’t focus on the prayer needs of others in your life, we want to pray for you.

Accountability 

Learning

  • Main Idea

Christ hung on a cruel cross so that we’d have the right to war through prayer. When we pray, we are accomplishing more to advance God’s kingdom against the powers of darkness than anything else we do because it engages God’s forces to fight what we can’t fight.

  • Content
    • Prayer is War
    • Matthew 6:9b-10a, 13
    • Matthew 26:41
    • Ephesians 6:10-13
    • 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
    • Luke 22:31-32
    • 1 Corinthians 10:13
  • Discussion
    • In what way is prayer an integral part of spiritual warfare? What does this mean?
    • What does it mean that in spiritual warfare, we do not fight for victory but rather from victory?
    • How can we trust Christ in prayer and submit to Him our weaknesses and needs in these various areas of spiritual warfare? How would we pray for overcoming faith in these areas of attack?
    • If you were to talk with a younger Christian about what to expect in the daily spiritual battles of life, what counsel and advice would you give them?
  • Practice
    • Write down a list of strongholds in your life that you need to attack with prayer. These could be sin issues, financial problems, familial problems, relational issues, etc.
    • War against Satan’s influence over those areas by covering them in prayer during your group time together. Pray specific, bold prayers.

Plan

  • Identify an area in each group members’ life that you need to go to war in prayer for.
  • Choose a time of day every day for a week that you will spend an hour in prayer for that area, asking God to go fight on your behalf
  • Choose a day to fast and pray for an issue that is common among the individuals in your group. Check in on one another that day and make a plan to break the fast together.

Conclude

Prayer is Submission to God

Prayer Request/Time in Prayer 

  • How can we pray for you?  
  • During this time, don’t focus on the prayer needs of others in your life, we want to pray for you.

Accountability

Learning

  • Main Idea

Christ’s death on the cross was not only a model of complete submission, it was the means by which we could access to power to follow that example. When we pray, we are supernaturally empowered to trust and submit to God’s perfect plan.

  • Content
  • Discussion
    • Why is it hard to submit our will to God or to any higher authority?
    • Give some examples here an unwillingness to surrender to God’s will made things more difficult or painful for you?
    • How can this help improve your prayer life? What are some takeaways for us that can change our attitude towards prayer?
  • Practice
    • Recognize the difficulty of the assignment that God has given you. Map out how much time in prayer you feel that is necessary to accomplish this assignment.
    • Spend some time in prayer asking the Holy Spirit to help your spirit overcome the desires of your flesh so that you can submit to the Lord.
    • Create a schedule to regularly persist in prayer so that you would grow in clarity of God’s will for your life.

Plan 

  • Share with the group where you have not been submitting to the Lord’s will for your life, but submitting to your own will. Explain the times in prayer that you are going to spend in order to come under the will of the Father instead of your own will.
  • Make a plan to hold each other accountable to the commitments of time that you made with the Lord. Text, call, or connect personally with each other in the coming weeks to help each other grow in submission to the Lord.

Conclude

Prayer is our Lifeline for Help

Prayer Request/Time in Prayer 

  • How can we pray for you?  
  • During this time, don’t focus on the prayer needs of others in your life, we want to pray for you.

Accountability 

Learning 

  • Main Idea

When we have struggles, our first reaction needs to be falling to our knees and seeking the Father’s provision, not solving our own problems. If He gave us Christ, He will give us everything we need if we’ll just ask Him for it.

  • Content
  • Discussion
    • When have you used prayer as a last resort in an emergency after trying to fix things on your own? What happened that you finally got around to praying about things?
    • How do we sometimes view God and our prayer life as an emergency response system instead of a daily relationship?
    • How and why do we confuse our needs and wants when it comes to praying about things going on in our lives and the problems that we are facing?
    • What are some areas of life that we can pray about each day and trust God to meet our needs in His way and His timing?
  • Practice
    • Take some time to write down the areas that you need God to show up in your life. Not the wants that you have but the needs that are present in your day-to-day life.
    • Cry out to God together. Ask God to make you humble enough to bring your needs to Him.
    • Confess where you have tried to solve your own problems instead of relying on the Lord’s provision.

Plan

  • Every group member write down 1-2 areas that they have been trying to solve their own problems instead of asking God for His provision. Once all of those are shared, hold each other accountable to seek God before trying to solve the problem this week.

Conclude

Practicing Prayer

Prayer Request/Time in Prayer 

  • How can we pray for you?  
  • During this time, don’t focus on the prayer needs of others in your life, we want to pray for you.

Accountability 

Learning 

  • Main Idea

Now that we’ve learned what prayer is, let’s put it all together and practice it within our time together as a group. Practice having intimacy with the Father, confess sins, have a time of asking, worship whole-heartedly, knowing that the Lord is with you.

  • Content
    • Practicing Prayer
    • Psalm 46:10
    • Ephesians 4:25-32
    • Matthew 6:10
    • John 16:7-8
    • 2 Chronicles 7:14
  • Practice
    • Have a prayer time together for the majority of your time as a group together! 
      • Get in a posture of prayer, which means kneeling, standing, hands lifted, palms out… prepare yourself to spend time for prayer
      • Open up your time together with songs of thanksgiving. These songs are not pre-planned but brought by the Holy Spirit and sung. Instruments are not required!
      • Budget your time together to include praying for each other in the group as well as for the needs of people outside of your group.
      • Pray for the missionaries supported by our church and for the church planters that have been sent out by our church.
      • Pray for unsaved friends and family member, by name, of your group that the Lord will open their hearts to receive the gospel and trust in Christ. Pray for gospel conversations with these friends and family member who need to receive Christ.
      • Pray for opportunities to serve Christ by serving the community around you and beat witness of the gospel to people in our city.
  • Discussion
    • What could be incorporated or adjusted to improve the time in prayer together?
    • Would you consider doing a focused prayer time on a monthly or quarterly basis as a group?
    • Would you consider coming to the Wednesday night prayer gatherings and regularly pray with the church?

Plan

  • Make a game plan for how you are going to hold each other accountable to praying the way that God has called you to now that this curriculum has ended.
  • Come up with a few names of people in your CG that you could take through this curriculum. Hold each other accountable to contact those people and start those D-Groups.

Conclude

NOTE: If you are the leader of this group and this is the last session that your D-Group will be meeting for, please fill out the Close Out your D-Group form! Thank you for your help in shepherding the flock at Fielder Church!