12. Four Ways to Practice Prayer to Become a Powerful Prayer Warrior

We should be all praying for people but many physicians feel nervous praying for others especially out loud. What if we could practice prayer to get us equipped and sharpen our skills?


In this episode of the 'Heal the Healers' podcast, hosted by Dr Inga Hofmann, listeners are guided on how they can effectively practice prayer. The discussion offers four tips that can help individuals become confident prayer warriors, including praying in small groups, in a local church during prayer meetings or as part of a prayer team, and receiving formal training as a prayer minister. The conversation emphasizes the importance of being led by the Holy Spirit and having empathy and compassion. 

00:00 Introduction to Prayer Practices
01:21 Four Tips to Practice Prayer
06:06 The Importance of Practicing Prayer
06:53 Personal Experiences with Prayer
08:09 The Four Tips to Practice Prayer in Detail
15:25 The Power of Formal Training in Prayer
21:41 Praying in Daily Life
25:31 Conclusion and Invitation to the Heal the Healers Mentorship Program
27:33 Final Words and Blessings

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Transcript

0:00

We should be all praying for people and we should do it sometimes perhaps even publicly or out loud. Now, in the last episode, we talked about how to pray for patients, but today I'm gonna really go and talk about how you can actually practice your prayer, because the truth is a lot of us feel a bit intimidated when it comes to praying for other people. And so I wanna give you some tips how you can overcome that and how you can gain comfort. And just be a blessing to other people. So stay tuned and we'll be right back. Welcome to the Heal the Healers podcast, where we explore the intersection of faith and medicine. Discover your God-given potential and experience Christ's healing in the midst of medical burnout. I'm your host, Ingar Hoffman, a pediatric key mock doc, physician, coach, and follow of Jesus. Together we will navigate the challenges of medicine, integrate faith into our personal and professional lives. Experience, spiritual renewal and find restoration in Christ. Welcome to the Heal the Healers, where Christ heals one physician and one patient at a time. Well, welcome back to another episode of Heal The Heal Us. I'm your host, Inga Hoffman, and today I'm excited to talk to you about how you can actually practice your prayer. So this episode is entitled four tips to practice prayer so that you too can become a prayer warrior and feel more confident praying for other people. Now, one thing I want you to remember right from the start is that. While you might be practicing, God is never practicing and he can walk through you, so just know he is in your corner. But still, people might say, well, I feel like I should practice a little bit more often so I can gain confidence praying for other people. And this is what this episode is all about. In the last episode, if you were with us we talked about four ways to pray for your patients, and I thought it would be helpful to go back and give you some practical tips indeed, how you can practice that so that when you are in front of a patient you feel like. I've opened my mouth a few times in front of other people before in terms of prayer versus just medical advice so that you feel more confident with that. Now, before I go there I wanna just encourage you, thank you so much for tuning into the show. I really appreciate it. And if you Could please subscribe to the show on YouTube, on your podcast channel, so that way you will actually get notified when I go live, when things are happening, when new episodes are up, and you don't have to look for the show, but the show comes to you. Also when you share this with other people, you spread the news, you spread that information. If you found it helpful, please share it with other people that you feel might be blessed by this, and I so appreciate it because it makes a big difference. Also, if you could just follow us on YouTube, Facebook, again, your favorite podcast platform, that would make a huge difference also for more people just to be able to see this show because just That's how technology works. The more people kind of follow, the more people will also see it and get interested as well. So don't keep the goodies to yourself and just share it with other people. Thank you so much. It really makes my day and I so appreciated so that we can make more difference in medicine through spreading news of how we as healers can heal and serve more people. Now let's dive right into today's topic. So we wanna talk about those four tips and how you can Sheer prayer and how you can practice prayer. And the first thing that I wanna say is there was numerous way, I'm just gonna give you four tips. I think they will really bless you and they're easy to do, to get you started. If you are in a position you felt like, you know, I've never really prayed openly for or with other people. I feel like really introverted and it's really hard for me to speak up. You sort of made it in medicine and you walked your way around that, but speaking up publicly can just be very nerve wracking for many people, even as physicians who speak to patients all the time. Now, praying for another person is a whole nother level that sometimes feels more intimidating to people because they feel some sort of pressure. That. Hey, if I'm praying for people, am I doing it the right way? Am I doing what God wants me to do? And I wanna just, again, take off that pressure. And first of all, here to tell you, remember even you are practicing, even you are new to this. God sees your heart and he blesses that and he is never practicing and he can walk Through the most awkward situations. In fact, the best testimonies are heard when people really stepped up and they were kind of shy to pray for people. The best testimonies are heard from some of the most amazing ministers is often when they stepped out completely feeling incompetent, nervous, timid, it just felt like. They just had to speak up or pray or say something to somebody in prayer. And then a whole amazing thing happened, like God would heal a person or he would deliver a person without having gone through training. And just following, like, remembering what the Bible said and somehow picked up those those words of the word of God. So be encouraged. And I believe that definitely happens. That's how God often works. But there's nothing wrong with also saying, you know, I want to pray for people and I also want to make this more habit and other ways to practice it. Now when we think about Christian. Practice in spiritual discipline. It seems sometimes a little bit off that we talk about practicing something that God calls us to do. Shouldn't we just do it? And is it wrong to even practice a skill? I would say no. Because you practice other skills, right? You practice how to be a gut doctor and you hone that skill and God wants you to be excellent at it. And the same way, there's nothing wrong. In practicing prayer, because the more you do it, the more you will experience. The more you will be a blessing to other people, the more you also will learn and train yourself to listen what God really says. And I started on this journey. Honestly, when I started praying for my patients, and I told you the story before, but I prayed for one of my patients and it was really one of those things where I felt God was instilling in me this zest, this hunger for prayer and a whole new level, and then was showing me things. Now if I hadn't been obedient, I would have never seen the miracles that took place. But I also knew in this moment, whoa, here is something that I hadn't uncovered or untapped, and I want to dig deeper into the word of God into prayer and be a bigger blessing moving forward. And what I took is I thought, well, there gotta be a way to Learn more about this versus just me kind of trying on my own and see what sticks. And obviously reading the word and having the Holy Spirit, I really felt convicted that I wanna dive deeper into this and actually ended up getting some formal training. And I will share this in the end, but I want you to know. That God can use you and prompt you in your situations. And then you might also find a blessing to hear God in a deeper way, the more you practice. So what is the first thing you can do that is really super easy? I. Well, if you are part of a local church and your church has small groups, which many churches do, sometimes we call them Bible study, but this is just a small group of people that go to your congregation or to your church. You get together, you read the word, and you pray and and you get to know each other, and that is such a wonderful way to get started. The reason is because you get to know this group of people. You become often friends with them, and it feels a little bit more comfortable to pray in a small setting of people that you relate with that are in your church, that you share the word with, that to care for each other, to just pray for each other. They are in a Non-judgmental setting. Now, obviously church should, in theory, never be judgmental, but we know that the world isn't the perfect place. So this is a great way to get started. And in fact, I like the way our church kind of laid it out for small group leaders. I'm a small group leader. Prayer is for me really a priority. We have always done this and we pray in the beginning and then in the end together for each other and we will share a prayer request. One person says, can you pray for this? This is on my heart this time. This is something I will be struggling with this week, or I have a praise report, and then somebody from the group immediately jumps in and prays for that. That keeps the flow going, and again, it is so easy because you are accompanied by people. You care about that, know you, and that you might feel more comfortable. So just open your mouth. Small group is a wonderful time and I know that even that is for some people a big step because they feel like I have to speak out loud and I might be judged. Please don't worry about the words you're saying, let it just flow through you. The Holy Spirit is interceding and praying on your behalf, so don't feel like you have to have the perfect words or written something out on a piece of paper. You know, just keep it simple. Just pray over them. Keep the words simple and keep your prayers simple. That's often the best. The next is our, in your local church, you can pray for people. There is a couple options that might be available. One is your church might have a prayer meeting where people get together and they pray on a weekly basis or however often your church meets for prayer, and you get to join in and pray. During a prayer meeting, and usually that means people just go around and people share a prayer with guests maybe in the beginning and they just start praying. Every church operates a little bit differently. But again, this is a great way to get Number one, surrounded by people that usually are pretty passionate about prayer. And number two, again, you get to pray in a community of believers that is sort of your home church. And that is wonderful. And you might glean also from others that are praying and say, wow. NoT to copy them, but to get inspired that the Lord has more for you and that there is a deeper level of prayer when we pray through instructions by the Holy Spirit and community, but others I found it often very inspiring In fact. wHen Covid started, I started a prayer group with other physicians and we prayed every night in the beginning for 30 minutes. An hour. And I was inspired by a lot of the physicians in that group, a lot of women physicians, how they prayed. It actually really moved me. I was like, wow, that woman is a force of God. Like she's a woman of God on fire, and her prayers going beyond the ceiling. That really blessed me because I saw an experience, the presence of God through other people's prayer, and then that gives you courage to pray more passionately more in tuned with a hurly spirit versus just Uttering words out of intellect. So prayer meetings are great. The next level up at your local church is probably to join the prayer team. You might have a prayer team on Sunday service that just is present after the After the service to pray with and for people that are in need of prayer, whether they are new believers, whether they have an illness or a personal situation, or they just want somebody to give them some encouragement, it is a wonderful way to bless people and to practice your prayer. And in fact, this is one of the very first things I did. I became really passionate about prayer and as I saw the transformation in my life and that of my patient's life, and then got some training, I was like, I gotta go and use these tools now in practice. I want to bless somebody else. So I started to join the prayer team. and I've been on there ever since, probably for about one and a half years. And I really rarely ever miss a Sunday. I mean, I always go, unless I'm out of town. And sometimes, honestly, at this point I'm like, is this blessing me mojo or them more? Because it is such a blessing to pray for people because you get to see things that the Lord is showing you and he is training and equipping you, and you are just enriching the body of Christ and, and you're just serving the Lord, and it's like a huge blessing. So I love doing it. But I tell you that I would have never thought years ago that that would be something. In fact, I would have thought, I don't wanna stand awkwardly in front of the congregation and be stared at by everybody as we are standing in front and welcoming people to pray for them. So this is something. That you could try out, I would advise if this is totally new to you, partner with somebody that has been on the prayer team for a long time. Come under they are discipleship and just learn from them. Be, you know they are, secondhand, so to speak, like pray in teams. That is always a good thing, right? Jesus sent the disciples out two by two. I think there's power in praying with a couple of people for one person. And there's a lot of good considerations doing that and not just being one-on-one if possible. That's a whole another topic. But the blessing also is when you step, besides somebody that has been in the prayer ministry for a while, again, you can glean from their wisdom, from their spiritual growth, from how they walked with the Lord, how they hear the Lord, how they minister to people, and just that observation can be very powerful. So I encourage you, go to your prayer meetings and join the prayer team. The fourth part is get formal training, and that was me when I experienced the power of healing prayer over my own body. Where in how God in. Wonderful ways restored me and, and here places that I didn't even think were broken helped me so much through prayer. Really relieve my migraines that I have been suffering since childhood from as long as I could remember. Sometimes almost daily through residency and everything. They're much better. I know they're better because people prayed over me and On the flip side, I mentioned in the beginning I had an experience with a patient where I prayed and interceded on a daily basis for a patient, and God was teaching and showing me things that I wasn't aware of before that I prayed for things that I. I couldn't know by medical knowledge, but only by the knowledge of the Holy Spirit and seeing how God turned a desperate situation around and really provided a miracle for this child In that way, I. And through these experiences that happened in parallel, I was like, there is, I need to serve the Lord more in this way. How can I not pray for other people more as I just experienced healing for myself and healing with a patient? So, and I'm the kind of person that when I, once I start something, I'm really all in. I am the thousand percent. I know there's not such thing as a thousand percent, but I'm the thousand percent kind of girl. I'm like, either I'm going all in or I don't do it at all. I'm typically not a dabbler. And so I decided I want to get some training and I reached out to a dear friend who had ministered to me and I will Prayed a lot over me. And so I was like, how did you learn this? Where did you go? And I kind of knew his story a little bit. So I was blessed in the way to say, okay, there are other ministries where you can get formal training. So I went to get formal training. As a Christian healing prayer minister from the Christian Healing Prayer Ministry, a wonderful ministry that has been there for I think over four decades. And I encourage you to check them out. There are a rich blessing. They offer prayer appointments. They train people in a very solid biblical sound of robust way. And I'm really so blessed that I have come under the stewardship that the shepherd ship and discipleship, I should say, of other people to help me really learn a whole lot more about prayer, about healing. I. About the different types of healing that I wanna cover on this podcast as well, so you can get to honor other ministries. This is just one that I picked because I knew somebody that had trained there and it seemed to work well for them, and it seemed spiritual and scriptural sound, so I felt like that was a great starting point. Now, there is many ministries out there that offer Prayer training, prayer ministry training that train churches and ministers in churches in prayer, so that's great. You can also start with your local church. Chances are they have, if they have a prayer team, they might have some training. And if they do, definitely always tap back into your local church and you might ask your pastor and say, pastor, do we have I pray team, can I get some training in this area? And it's not like you need training necessarily in the words to speak per se. The Holy Spirit will instruct you what to say and pray over in each situation. You really need to rely on the Holy Spirit a hundred percent. But there are some good things to know. Just like as a doctor, there are some good things to know when you, you know, examine on a patient when you hear symptoms that you can make a diagnosis based on symptoms exams and lab and the constellation of all of those. Sometimes prayer ministry, especially healing prayer ministry can be very similar to that. There will be clues that you hear from either the Holy Spirit and or the. Prayer person, the person that's asking for prayer, that will give you clues how to pray more effectively. So I do feel like having some basic knowledge and being trained well in good biblical protocol on how to pray for people also what not to do is very, very helpful and important. And it is important to understand. These are things that are good to do. These are good practices, and also be aware of pitfalls where you could potentially harm a person unintentionally by perhaps praying in the wrong way or out of your own intellect or what you think is going on. There is a lot we could cover here, but I just want to underscore the importance of training because it will teach us in good biblical protocol in some background knowledge about really diving deep. What does the Bible say about prayer, specifically healing prayer, so that we are really mindful of. Following the Lord's example and loving and caring and praying for people and not some formula. That's not really formula. The owning formula is the Holy Spirit. But that we also have some guardrails and red flags in our mind when we need to watch out as a prayer minister to not step in other territory or. Just being mindful of those things. So former training is very helpful. Now I just realized I skipped over number three, So let's go back. The third thing or the fourth thing in this order is you could pray just. As you are led by the Holy Spirit as you go about your day. So as you go and out and about, maybe you're running errands or you're getting your kids or you're doing groceries, whatever it is, there might be things in your daily life where you have opportunity to pray for other people. And I know that is probably the most scary thing. Perhaps it's good I put this at last as the last point to say, whoa, I don't wanna. Pray for a stranger outside of the church setting, not in a training setting that is somewhat controlled and just pray for people in the store. But it might happen to you. You might be put in a situation where the Holy Spirit is really prompting you to go up and pray for a person, or that you observe something and you're like, something is off. I think this person needs help and offer prayer. And I want you to be aware of that and stay attuned to that. Now, the word of caution here is make sure you listen to the Holy Spirit. Don't just go out and kind of randomly you know, pray over all the people that hadn't asked or that you haven't heard the. Prompting from the Holy Spirit and certainly don't make up stuff to pray for when you have no idea because it is a stranger. You can do, again, more harm than good, but there might be situations. I just wanna give you a personal example that happened to me probably about a month ago. I was visiting at another church. I was in a worship service and I left a little bit earlier. And this again, was not my church. This was not my home church. I really don't know anybody there. I just love to go there occasionally to worship. And so I left to go home. And as I left the, the lobby area, there was a young man sitting there, That looked like he needed some help. Maybe he was distressed. I don't know who that was. I never met the person again, but it was just in my heart to pray for that person. It was like, usually I would rush by those things and sort of, this is not my business. This is not my church. But in that moment, I personally felt prompted from the Holy Spirit to pass check in with this person. Say, Hey, are you okay? And do you mind, I pray for you, the person said Yes, sure, if you want to. I have no idea what was going on. I have no idea if the prayers I prayed that I believe led by the spirit or prompted by the spirit landed anywhere or what impact that had or did not have. I just, when I hear those things I'm learning. We have to learn to be obedient to these things. And that was a random situation. Yes. Not a grocery store was a church. So you could say, well, it's kind of a safe bag. But no, I mean, you don't know who's sitting there in the lobby. It could be somebody who's actually just walked in the church and it's completely broken. You have no idea who the person is. So listen to those promptings and be mindful. That you are prompted to do that. So that is sort of a wrap. So these four tips are, you can pray in your small group. That's a safe start. You can pray at your local church, either on the prayer team or during the prayer meeting. I. You can go out and about about your day and the Lord might prompt you through the Holy Spirit to pray for somebody. Be open to that. That's great practice to hear the God Lord's voice. And then number four, you can get formal training through another ministry or your local church. So I really hope that bless you and again, thanks for tuning in today. Don't forget to share and subscribe to the show. I also wanted to let you know that. There is a time when I will be opening a program for physicians. It's called the Heal the Healers Mentorship Program, and it is a bible-based mentorship program, discipleship training, mentorship, and coaching for question physicians to receive. Training and discipleship and equipping each other to integrate our faith into our medical practice to feel not so torn between those two worlds. There will be Bible teaching, there will be prayer. I. There will be even some coaching. It's gonna be amazing. I'm launching this to a small group of people in the last second to last week of January, January 22nd. You have an opportunity to join for a few days. If this is something that you are interested, just get on the wait list so you can get more information. It doesn't commit you to anything, but just use the QR code here, scan it, and get on the wait list to. Potentially join that group and learn more information. And if you're like, well, I'm good, that's not for me, that's great, but you really don't wanna miss out on this opportunity. This is literally the only mentorship group that I know of. I've never seen anything like that. That's why I'm starting it because the Lord says, you know, disciple my people, disciple the Christian physicians. And so that's what I'm set out to do. So get on the wait list. We are starting January 22nd to 26th is when you can join. After that, the doors will be closed because I'm gonna focus on that initial group of people that are joining to mentor, disciple, and get to know each other. It's gonna be amazing because I believe that if we connect more together, we can encourage each other and bless the medical community that really is broken and needs our help. So, God bless you. Have a wonderful day. Talk to you soon and. That I will talk to you next time. My prayer is that you were encouraged, strengthened, and perhaps even convicted with this episode today. If this podcast has blessed you, would you help share it with your friends and colleagues and even share it on social media? Also, leave us a review on the podcast platform where you are listening to this content. It would help us a lot. Together we can share the good news of Jesus and transform medicine. One physician and one patient at the time. Have a great day. God bless.