Flourish by Christina Leal

I was recently blessed to have a conversation with Erica Renaud, author of the book, Pray with Me. Listen in as we discuss some of the following topics – -A little bit of Erica's personal testimony and what prayer currently looks like at home with her 5 kids (elementary through college age). -How we can remove the burden of carrying our children's relationship with God by simply giving them consistent opportunities to encounter Him. -The discouragement parents can feel as their kids are getting older and they feel like they may have missed the boat with all of this. Erica shares some really helpful thoughts on this and reminds us that it's never too late to change the habits of our household. -Not a mom?  Erica and I discuss how it's not necessarily just moms that bring children to Jesus...Listen in to the ways we all can minister to others in meaningful ways through prayer. I trust that this conversation with Erica will bless you, your family and those around you in the same way it has blessed me!

Congratulations!  You've planted, watered, fertilized and tended.  The garden of your prayer life is growing and flourishing!  Here are a few closing thoughts from me as we come to a conclusion of this practical prayer study. 

In this final episode of our 8-week audio course, I will be sharing some example prayers with children that can inspire you plan set times to pray about certain topics or events according to the routine of your daily life.

Sharing stories of God's faithfulness can build your children's faith and trust in God, as well as their desire to pray.  Let's discover how sharing stories of God's faithfulness is a biblical directive and critical in building our own faith as well as the faith of our children and those God has set in our lives.  

In this episode we're going to talk about some helpful prayer activities that we can incorporate into our family life.  To start, I want to point out that prayer itself is not an activity, it's a conversation. If we're not intentional with this, we'll lead our kids into checking off prayer as an activity on their to-do list...and we might do the same ourselves!  Let's dig in to see how we can build in these prayer activities into our everyday lives.

Moving into this next section, I envision flourishing vines…I see how our own personal prayer life that has become deeply rooted in the Lord is beginning to grow out into the visible space of of the garden.  The flowers are budding and beautiful…vines are beginning to stretch out beyond the garden.  In this episode, we'll be challenged to begin pouring into others outside of the 4 walls of our own home.

In this episode we will be infusing our prayer plan with scripture.  Applying scripture activates and brings power to our prayers.  It also ensures that we are not just praying our own will but we are praying HIS will. Now that we have prayer topics and a prayer schedule…we know what we're going to pray about each day of the week, we will dig into the word in order to find scripture to pray over our topics. Here I'll share some examples of scriptures we can pray over a variety of topics and some sample prayers.    

Now that we've examined the present state of our prayer life, let's get planning, digging and planting.  In this episode we'll be talking about creating a plan for prayer using the PRAY acronym and a prayer schedule.

In this course we will talk a lot about how our lives, specifically our prayer lives, can impact the generations to come.  We all want to pray prayers that impact the world around us, as well as the generations to come.  If we have kids, we of course want to see them grow an active and fruitful prayer life, but would we say that we ourselves have an active and fruitful prayer life? Let's begin by examining our own roots and reflecting on how our own personal prayer lives have develeoped so that we can do the work needed to grow on a solid foundation.

Flourish...flowers that flourish are flowers that grow under harsh conditions.  We may all be in different seasons of life, but one thing we all have in common...harsh conditions.  The exciting thing is that the difficult seasons of life, if we allow them to, can cause us to press into the Lord more than ever and develop a flourishing life in the Lord.  In this introductory episode, we will focus in on the unseen, underground work of prayer and how we can implement a practical plan to develop a flourshing prayer life that nourishes the generations.

This intro episode explains the vision for this audio course as well as what you can expect to gain from listening!  It also provides info on the Nourish and Flourish notebooks that can be purchased to accompany this course!