Prayer Online in the Social Networking Society

I hope this article helps those looking to do more outreach but feel held back by shyness, disability or what ever may be holding you back from sharing your faith with others.

I'm a shy person by nature, and have a hard time witnessing to total strangers. I've found I'm by far more skilled conversing ideas and emotions via email, social networking sites and such. I regularly use social networking sites like myspace.com, myyearbook.com, face book.com, faith freaks.com, and the countless others like them.

I noticed each site lets you post your current status on your personal profiles. Status announcements like "Making Dinner", or "Sitting here bored and depressed". I regularly started listing my status as "Taking Prayer Requests online", and I've been amazed by the amount of heartfelt requests for prayer I get from every walk of life, believers and non-believers alike.

When I receive their personal prayer request I promptly pray over their message, then I reply to the sender with a Thank You and any scripture or personal experience advice I can offer to the person in need. I some times even write a prayer and ask the sender to pray it with me when they read their messages. I know we both wont be praying at the same time but the point is were praying for the same person or situation with in minutes or hours of the request. I've even posted a prayer request blog on one of my myspace.com pages to get multiple people praying over requested people.

Going back to the current status on the social network users profiles, I've made it a point to seek out users who list "depressed", or "crushed" other similar emotional word or phrase that is an obvious chance for out reach in to their lives. When I see someone with a current status that sounds like they need love I send them a simple greeting like,
"Hi,
Hope your feeling better soon,
If you need anything just shoot me a message.
Take care and keep in touch.
God Bless!!"

This opens up communication and stays non-threatening to the person in need. Most respond well and lay their problems on me, or strait out ask for prayer over a person or situation. Either way each basic friendly point of contact with these new found Online Friends shows them the love of Christ. Someone reaching out to hear what's troubling them someone to offer a spiritual comforting word, or even personal experience advice or story to help show them their situation can be turned around for the better. I urge each person to keep in contact with me via the respective social networking site, and I make it a point to follow up every few days or every other week with a simple greeting to see how each person is doing. I try to keep a message or prayer request from each person in my message Inbox as a reminder to pray over their needs and to help follow up with each person.

I feel by taking prayer requests online has helped me personally to use these sites for what they where designed for to meet new people, make friends, and share information and ideas, in other words social networking.

I recommend this to any one looking to make a difference in the world but feel held back for any reason, we all use some form of social networking site, or blog and are already using the internet for hours on end. Why not use a little of that online time to serve Jesus and help heal those who are in need worldwide or even in your own town. These few friendly encounters online are great ways to plant a seed of faith in someone and hopefully return to water and tend to each seed.

I urge you the reader to try this by simply posting on your online profiles status as "Taking prayer requests" or even on your profile or blog anywhere visible, and see how many of your current online friends lives you can reach into.

Enjoy and as always God Bless,
Tim Schnieders