Step 6 of Agape Prayer Practice

STEP 6 takes us beyond the individual approach of Steps 1-5. So while each of those first 5 steps (or expansions) had us focusing on one person at a time, Step 6 is to expand ‘the circle of agape’ out to a group of people.

A good group to start with is one that you feel especially close to in such a way that you get a sense when you’re with that group that agape is flowing among at least a few of those in the group. So it becomes easy for you to pray for the well-being of both the individual members and the group as a whole. Pray for the spiritual power of agape to flow through the group in a way that increases the caring, compassion, and closeness among the members. During this prayer, begin imagining how the increase in agape becomes evident in the way the members relate to each other.

For my agape practice, the first example is a church because I use the agape prayer every morning with the Colorado churches that I pastored and the one I attend in retirement. Because I’m still in contact with these churches and they are still in my prayers anyway, it was a natural progression for me, as I developed Agape Prayer, to let them be the first groups for me to think about for praying for agape to spread throughout their members and their ministry in their neighborhoods. So I pray for God to strengthen their well-being and their sense of mission.

Other possible choices might be a school or family or neighborhood or housing complex. Pray to experience how God sends agape to them. When I say pray for the well-being of that group, I mean in the same way that you prayed for a person in Steps 2-5.

During the next 5 postings in this series, I will spend each posting focussing on one step.

As the Agape Prayer Practice develops for you, it helps to constantly keep realizing that these steps are only possible because agape does not originate with you, but is actually the way the divine Presence is made manifest to all that God creates. So you are merely following God’s agape into the interactions of a group.

We can imagine that if enough people throughout the world practiced such a prayer practice, a profound change would come about in the way groups, making up diverse backgrounds, would treat each other. Just imagine what would happen as huge numbers of people experienced a warm-hearted feeling of fellowship, sympathy and compassion. That could grow boundless and become the basis for overcoming all social, religious, racial, political and economic barriers. At last a new kind of world would begin to become possible.