Prayer - Baby Steps (All Kinds of Prayer Book 1)
When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring it back, like a mother. Count the times God's Book tells us to "try. God wants us to feel free after we repent for we really are free then ; the devil is a deceiver.
The Power of Prayer | Stormie Omartian
The devil tempts us to cavalier pride before we sin and worrisome despair afterward, since pride and despair both separate us from God, and anything that separates us from God is the devil's friend and our enemy, while anything that brings us close to God is the devil's enemy and our friend. Otherwise we would become spiritual cripples, unable to walk without emotional crutches. This is why he gives us dryness, sufferings, and failures. Prayer is the hospital for souls where we meet Doctor God. That is why he does not take us down from our crosses: He wants the very best for us, the strongest and most precious gift, and that is faith.
The reason these things will fail while faith will not fail is that all these things depend on us, while faith depends on God. It is a gift of God. And we all are. We are addicted to whatever we cannot part with that is less than God, our true good. And that includes ourselves--especially ourselves and our own will. So we must renounce this too, this especially. With God, nothing is ever as dead as it seems. Not even your own feelings. I learned that the best things for my marriage was for me to have women prayer partners with whom I prayed every week.
I now believe this is vital for any marriage. If you can find two or more strong faith-filled people whom you thoroughly trust, and with whom you can share the longings of your heart, set up a weekly prayer time. It will change your life. In fact, I wrote it for myself as much as I wrote it for you. Many days I find life difficult rather than easy, complex rather than simple, potentially dangerous rather than safe, and exhausting rather than exhilarating.
But I have come to know that God can smooth my path, calm the storms, keep me and all I care about safe, and even make my way simple when I ask Him to carry the complexities of life for me. Or we only pray about the most pressing issues and neglect to take the time to really get close to God, to know Him better, and to share with Him the deepest longings of our heart. In our pray-and-run existence, we shut off the very avenue by which He brings blessings into our lives.
And we risk waking up one day with that empty, insecure feeling in the pit of our stomach frightening us with the thought that our foundation may be turning into sand and our protective armor may be becoming as fragile as an eggshell. This is what happened to me. A number of years ago, I had become so busy with working, taking care of teenagers, trying to be a good wife, running a home, writing books and traveling to promote them, being at all church meetings, helping people who needed it, and trying to make everyone happy, that I neglected the most important thing—my intimate walk with God.
Actually, I was praying more than ever about everyone else on the planet. I read for hours as I did research in the Scriptures for different projects I was working on and the Bible study classes I was taking. I was busy doing good and neglected to do what was best. I became Martha instead of Mary without even realizing it Luke I felt like that eggshell, as if I could be crushed with very little outside pressure.
I knew I needed more of God in my life, and nothing on earth was more important than that. And I came to realize how important it was for me to guard and protect my personal relationship with God in prayer. It will keep us focused on who God is and who He made us to be.
It will lift our eyes from the temporal to the eternal and show us what is really important. It will give us the ability to distinguish the truth from a lie. It will strengthen our faith and encourage us to believe for the impossible. So I was willing to endure those uncomfortable moments for the benefits that followed.
Eventually, the prayer circles became an important part of my life, and I even began to look forward to them. I planned during the week what I would ask people to pray for me about on Sunday. Once I started seeing answers to those prayers, I was hooked. I realized it was probably the only time anyone on earth was praying for me, and if I had not told the people in my prayer circle about my prayer needs, no one would have known.
On a few very rare occasions when the prayer circles did not happen, I was actually disappointed. As time went on, I grew more and more attached to the prayer circles. Not only were prayers being answered, but there was also a bonding that was happening between the people. I would see someone in church with whom I had prayed in the previous weeks, and I remembered their names and what their needs were. And people I had not known before meeting them in a prayer circle would also come up and ask about me. More and more, the faces in the prayer circles became familiar.
There was this personal link, and we had immediate reasons to care about each other. We witnessed it knitting us together as a people, and this became more important as the congregation grew larger. It became less and less a congregation of strangers, and more a family of prayer partners. Immediately a young woman came to mind. Dianne had been my closest friend for years, but we had become distant.
I had been praying for her to be open to the Lord, and in fact prayed for her often in the prayer circles at church, but she was solidly resistant. After she received the Lord, we started praying together regularly over the phone at least three times a week. Through the next few years, we saw our prayer times become instrumental in each of us finding the healing and wholeness God had for our lives. From that time on, having a prayer partner became an indispensable necessity I could not afford to be without.
Read More Your Daily Prayer
My sister Suzy is on the left and my close friend Roz is on the right. If you never had someone praying with you when you were growing up, you are not alone. Ask God to send you someone with whom you can agree on a regular basis. Someone with whom you can be mutually accountable in prayer.
30 Day Prayer Challenge for Your Husband
It could be a person you already know, such as a friend, roommate, or family member. Or someone in your neighborhood, in a class you are taking, or at work. It could even be someone new He brings into your life specifically for that purpose. Someone you may have seen but never thought about in that regard. He will show you who it is. One word of caution. He likes to pray for the big picture; I like to pray for the details.
Though we pray together often, I have prayer partners to pray with me regularly. For example, when I first started to pray with other people, I was afraid God would not answer my prayers, as if all answers to prayer depended entirely on me. I also felt reticent to pray in front of others who had a better command of the language or a greater knowledge of how to pray. It was up to God.
All I had to do was have faith that God answers prayer. When you start praying regularly with a partner, you will see great things happen. And always remember that "God's Spirit is in you and is more powerful that the one that is in the world" 1 John 4: Finally, as you begin the spiritual battle, take comfort knowing that you are not alone: Jesus also is interceding on your behalf!
The Bible says that Jesus "is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them" Heb. It's the kind of prayer that endures all setbacks and overcomes every obstacle. It's prayer that "presses on" until we "apprehend" God's will in whatever situation we are facing see Phil. This kind of prayer is the key to seeing breakthroughs in your life and in the lives of those around you.
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Jesus gave a great model for intercession in the story of the persistent friend. Here we see a friend who knocks on his neighbor's door at midnight to ask for three loaves of bread. The neighbor does not want to get up, but Jesus said, "because of his friend's persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs" Luke Then Jesus said, "Everyone who asks will receive, everyone who searches will find, and the door will be opened for everyone who knocks" Luke Those words mean keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking.
In God's time, your persistence in intercessory prayer will reap a spiritual harvest in your life and the lives of those around you! In Ezekiel, God says, "And I searched for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found no one" Ezek. Through intercession, you can take the offensive in the spiritual battle, building up your community, your nation and your world.
As you follow God's call to rise up and take your place in the spiritual battle, God promises to "heal their land" 2 Chron. He is not looking for perfect prayer warriors, just willing hearts who want to see His will come to pass on the earth. All you have to do is turn to the Lord in prayer: Help me to be persistent in prayer until the breakthrough comes.
Thank You for this powerful weapon of spiritual warfare -- and for Your faithfulness in my life. Instead, we use God's power that can destroy fortresses.