Of all the gifts that God has given me, the most unusual one is connected to public prayer.
It seems to be a combination of the spiritual gifts of intercession and exhortation. The way this gift reveals itself is that when I pray aloud with others, they feel the Holy Spirit is working and moving their hearts in encouragement, conviction or other.
I have had this Holy Spirit power in public prayer since I was a young convert in college, while praying is small groups. A year after my conversion, I become convicted that my public prayer was too performance oriented, so I stopped praying out loud in public for a year. After that discipline, I was able to return to praying in public without being overly concerned with the reactions of others to my prayers.
For several decades, I focused on using other gifts like teaching and didn't make much effort to use my prayer gift in public. Instead, I mostly prayed in my "prayer closet". However, after the encouragement of my family, last year I began to more openly pray in public as a ministry, including stopping my sermon for intercessory prayer at key points. The congregation that I was visiting really liked that combination of preaching and prayer, asking me to do more in future visits.
I am still only learning the best ways to use this gift/ministry. Unfortunately, there is very little information online that I can find on spiritual gifts and public prayer, nor do I know anyone with a similar gift. If anyone has such experience or can point to examples of others, I would appreciate it.
It seems to be a combination of the spiritual gifts of intercession and exhortation. The way this gift reveals itself is that when I pray aloud with others, they feel the Holy Spirit is working and moving their hearts in encouragement, conviction or other.
I have had this Holy Spirit power in public prayer since I was a young convert in college, while praying is small groups. A year after my conversion, I become convicted that my public prayer was too performance oriented, so I stopped praying out loud in public for a year. After that discipline, I was able to return to praying in public without being overly concerned with the reactions of others to my prayers.
For several decades, I focused on using other gifts like teaching and didn't make much effort to use my prayer gift in public. Instead, I mostly prayed in my "prayer closet". However, after the encouragement of my family, last year I began to more openly pray in public as a ministry, including stopping my sermon for intercessory prayer at key points. The congregation that I was visiting really liked that combination of preaching and prayer, asking me to do more in future visits.
I am still only learning the best ways to use this gift/ministry. Unfortunately, there is very little information online that I can find on spiritual gifts and public prayer, nor do I know anyone with a similar gift. If anyone has such experience or can point to examples of others, I would appreciate it.
