Understanding The Power Of A Praying Parent Study Guide
The Power Of A Praying Parent Study Guide is a curriculum designed around Steven Furtick's work on intercessory prayer for fathers and mothers. It breaks down into eight sessions that examine biblical passages, personal testimonies, and practical application steps. Most people use it either individually or in small group settings at churches. You can find it through Christian bookstores, online retailers, and some denominational resource centers. The core premise is straightforward: parents who commit to dedicated prayer over a set period experience shifts in their relationships with their children and in their own spiritual discipline. The guide structures that commitment into daily reading and reflection periods alongside weekly group discussion points.
How To Use The Power Of A Praying Parent Study Guide Effectively
I ran into a specific problem last year when a youth pastor asked me to help facilitate this guide with a group of about twelve parents. The standard format calls for one session per week over eight weeks, with daily devotionals assigned between meetings. Most people treated the daily portion as optional background reading and showed up to discuss whatever the leader out. That approach rarely produces lasting habits. The workaround I settled on was simpler than what the publishers suggest. I had everyone commit to completing their daily devotional before any group session. Not reading it. Actually doing it. We spent the first two meetings just on accountability for whether people had done the daily work. By week three, the quality of discussion changed noticeably because people actually had material to contribute instead of guessing at answers. Another thing that helps: pair the study with your existing calendar. Don't treat it as an extra obligation layered on top of everything else. If you already review your week every Sunday evening, slot the daily devotion into that same block. The time required is roughly fifteen to twenty minutes per day once you are moving through it comfortably. That is not dramatic, but consistency matters more than duration.
What The Guide Actually Covers
Session one establishes the foundation. It addresses why parental prayer is positioned as a spiritual discipline rather than a contingency tactic. Several participants in my group pushed back on this initially. They wanted shortcuts. The text does not offer any. Sessions two through five move into specific areas: praying for protection over children, praying against anxiety and fear, praying for direction in parenting decisions, and praying for the child's relationship with God. Each session includes a scripture reading, a teaching segment, a prayer exercise, and a discussion question set. The prayer exercises are the part most people skip because they feel awkward doing them without preparation. Sessions six through eight focus on persistence, intergenerational impact, and sustaining the practice after the study concludes. That final section is where the guide tends to lose people. The content is solid but the practical transition from structured study to ongoing habit gets compressed into the last two sessions. You need to plan that transition yourself.
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Where This Guide Falls Short
There are limitations worth noting before you invest time. The guide assumes a certain level of theological literacy. If you are new to Christian prayer practices or come from a tradition that does not emphasize intercessory prayer, some of the language will feel unfamiliar without supplementary resources. I had one participant who admitted she had never prayed beyond saying grace at meals. She dropped out by week four because the expectation to lead extended prayers felt insurmountable. The guide also assumes access to a stable support environment. Single parents working multiple jobs, families dealing with active substance abuse, or households in crisis situations will find the daily devotion structure difficult to maintain. The framework is designed for relatively stable parenting contexts. In those higher-stress situations, a shorter format or one-on-one pastoral guidance works better than group study. Another issue is the demographic focus. The original material skews toward middle-class suburban families with predictable routines. Some of the examples and scenarios do not translate well to different cultural or economic contexts. That does not make the underlying principles wrong, but it does mean you may need to adapt several passages to fit your actual life rather than the hypothetical one the guide constructs.
Where To Obtain The Study Guide
The Power Of A Praying Parent Study Guide is available in print and digital formats. Major Christian retailers carry the physical workbook and the accompanying video or audio materials depending on which edition you choose. Online platforms like Amazon, Christianbook.com, and Barnes & Noble stock it. Some churches offer it through their resource centers at a reduced rate or include it in parenting ministry budgets. If you prefer self-paced study without a group, the digital version works adequately. The printed workbook has margin spaces and sections designed for handwritten notes, which most people find useful for retention. I recommend the print version if you are doing this alone. The tactile element of writing things down seems to reinforce the practice in a way that scrolling through a PDF does not.
A Counter-Intuitive Point About This Material
Most people approach this guide expecting it to change their children. That is not what it does. The actual mechanism is subtler. The daily prayer practice reshapes the parent's temperament first. You become less reactive. You stop responding to behavioral issues with immediate frustration because the habit of pausing to pray introduces a delay between stimulus and response. That delay changes parenting dynamics more than any specific prayer language ever will. The guide never states this explicitly. It frames the outcomes around the children's spiritual development. But from experience, the parent-level shift is where measurable change actually occurs. Children notice when a parent is calmer. They respond to that before they respond to any prayer said on their behalf. If you are looking for a quick fix or a way to indirectly control your child's choices through prayer, this guide will disappoint you. If you are willing to sit with the discomfort of changing your own behavior first, the structure holds up reasonably well over the eight-week period. The daily devotion takes about fifteen minutes. The group discussion runs roughly forty-five to sixty minutes. Factor in preparation time if you are leading rather than participating, and plan for an additional twenty minutes per session to read ahead and consider the discussion questions.
Some people supplement this with Furtick's main book Power Of A Praying Parent for deeper theological context. That pairing works if you have the bandwidth. Most people only need the study guide itself. The book adds depth but also adds volume, and the study guide already contains the essential material organized for practical use.
