#040 - What Requests to Send Your Prayer Team

Welcome back to this hit splits episode. My name is Shelly Hitz, the founder and owner of Christian Book Academy. And today I want to talk about what requests to send your prayer team. So if you've been around here any amount of time, you've heard me talk about the importance of having a prayer team specifically for your writing. And I was recently talking to a Christian Book Academy member on, on our voxer office hours about having a prayer team and she just asked a question I felt a little bit stuck about. Like what request do I send a prayer team specifically about this? And so I just wanted to record this quick episode. If you are a Christian Book Academy member, we have a training on setting up a prayer team. It's in the Kingdom Foundations module. And if you're not on in Christian Book Academy yet, we'd love to have you join us. You can join us@christianbookacademy.com or I also have a free blog post if you go to trainingauthors.com and search the blog for prayer team. It's really old, but it still is the same content. So anyways.

What you'll want to do is consistently send prayer requests to your prayer team. And I do it on a weekly basis. I have a repeating.

Calendar reminder for Mondays and you could do any day for me. Mondays is my admin day. And so it just is a good day for me to remember to do this. And then I have a email in my email provider system. So I have a separate lead magnet sign up page. You know, it's kind of like a, just an email subscription page. There's really no lead magnet that they're going to get but that where people can sign up to be part of my prayer team. I don't host calls, I don't do you know anything like that? Cause a Christian Book Academy member recently asked me too, like as an introvert, how do you do a prayer team? Because I've seen people that do it and they host calls and they, they do all these things and it just seems exhausting and I'm like, no, I just have my email subscription system. I have people sign up that are interested in supporting our ministry and then I just send out the email. It's, it's, it really is for me it, it tends to be more one way but you could make it two way if you feel comfortable. You could always say reply back with any request that you have. And I'd love to pray for you as well. So I just keep it simple. So I have a template in my email system that I just, I duplicate from the week before. So I just, I keep duplicating the, the email I sent the week before. And I just start off with thank you so much for being part of my prayer team. And then I have a praise section and then I look down at the previous request that I sent out and I give any updates on the praises and I say praise, you know, this went well or this happened or thank you for praying this, you know, we were able to do this or that. And then I just have a list. And I will be honest, like the top three maybe requests are different each week and the bottom maybe five to seven are the same every week. So there are some requests that I just keep the same every week.

One of them is that God would provide the right people at the right time to buy the right books and that people would, you know, would, that God would bring people to, to buy my broken crystal color book or listen to that podcast or find that those resources and God would give me wisdom for how to what to, you know, how to serve Christian Book Academy and that God would provide the finances above and beyond the finances that we need. You know, there's certain requests that are the same every week and that is okay, you know, because there's going to be certain things that are going to be the same. And then I usually ask for prayer if I'm working on a specific project. So if you're writing a book right now or if you're working on a specific project, you can just say please pray for wisdom, insight, whatever it is that you're wanting prayer for for that particular project. If I'm have a, any kind of live event like if, if we're doing an event with Christian Book Academy, if we have a conference, if we, if I'm hosting a one on one call or you know, if whatever it might be, if I'm doing a workshop, I'll usually ask for prayer for that. A lot of times I'll also ask for prayer that the technology would work well for any kind of event like that. And I ask personal things too, like my health. So if I'm having health issues that are impacting my ability to work or the ministry. Last year I had issues with my shoulders and it ended up being first rib issues. My chiropractor ended up finding it and I ended up researching it online and finding some other help and exercises and things and it is feeling so much better. I changed some things with related to posture, I changed some things related to my sleep and my pillow and all those things. But anyways, I asked my prayer team to pray for those things and, and you know, God has answered those prayers as well. I mean, it's not completely 100% different, but, man, I am not in chronic pain every day. Like, I was there for a while, so pain, you know, different health issues that you might be having, you can ask prayer for those. I also recently have asked prayer for my nieces. They're in high school and this is a rough time for them. And I also asked my sister permission to send this out, and she asked me to just, you know, say it in a certain way. And so it's just pretty general. I, I didn't really share any personal information, you know, because you also don't want, if you're asking prayer for someone else, you don't want to share their stuff that is theirs to share. You know what I mean? Like, but I'm just asking them to pray for them. And recently we have been seeing some answer prayers for my nieces and our last visit was so good with them. So, hey, you know, feel free to, to put some things in there about your family too. But I really try to stay focused most of the time on whatever I'm working on this week, whatever, whatever the project is that I'm focused on, whatever the events are, whatever I'm, you know, God has lead me to do.

You might have something in there. We've recently been talking about 90 day goals on this podcast. And so you might even one of your ongoing requests, month after month might be, you know, this quarter, my goal is, and, you know, let them know what your goal is. Pray for God to give me wisdom and then the ability to keep moving forward on this goal. And then every quarter, you know, update what your quarterly goal is. So I hope that gave you some just more practical ideas. It really is. It doesn't have to be rocket science. It's just, what are you working on? Where are your roadblocks? Where do you feel stuck? Where do you need help? And let these people on your prayer team be like Aaron and her holding up your arms. You know, Moses was.

Holding up his arms, and when he held up his arms, and I think he had his staff in his hand, I'd have to look back at the scripture. The Israelites were winning the war. When his arms started to go down, they started losing. And so he had two people come beside him, hold up his arms. Sometimes we need the body of Christ to come beside us and hold up our arms. Sometimes we do that for other people. So you know, there are times that I do that for others. I have a few friends that, that I do that for. And then C.J. and I are, are on our prayer team at church and we will pray with people at the altar. We, we do pre service prayer and so we invest in others in prayer as well. So even though I'm not, it's not a two way thing on my prayer team. Like we have our War room prayer meeting call with Christian Book Academy every month. If you're a member, I encourage you to call to come or to listen to the replays. Even this month we had several people that listened to the replay and said they so blessed, so impacted, so grateful that they listened. And if you're not a Christian Book Academy member yet, we would love for you to join us. Join us@christianbookacademy.com it is now open to join anytime. So you can come and join us today and join our next war room prayer meeting call. But I hope that this has just helped you a little bit. And if you don't have a personal private prayer team just for your writing, I encourage you to set one up. It's super easy. We have that training in Christian Book Academy and the Kingdom Foundations lesson. Or you can check out my blog, just search prayer team and basically you're just going to have a few people on that list. It's not going to be big, it's just going to be a few people and you're going to send requests to them every week. I would, I would encourage you every week, but on a consistent basis, whatever you decide. All right, friends, I hope this was helpful and this really has been a game changer for, for us and our ministry and it was something that was recommended to us years ago and I'm so glad that we implemented it. All right, I will talk to you in the next episode.