Posts Tagged ‘prayer’

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How to Pray for Wisdom

Friday, January 10th, 2014

how-to-pray-for-wisdom

On the night before teaching the prayer Bible study about how to pray for wisdom, I was out on my porch talking to my husband. I asked him what I should say if some of the women have asked God for wisdom and didn’t get it. In other words, what blocks people from getting wisdom from God? And conversely, what can we do to ready our hearts to receive God’s wisdom?

I asked my husband because so many times he has received supernatural wisdom from God when I came to him with an impossible situation that I needed him to fix. I always thought my husband was just gifted in godly wisdom, but he laughed. He said that whenever I came to him with an impossible situation, he would freak out God-ward, and then God would give him the answer. In other words, my husband leaned on God and cried out to Him with all his heart and soul, and God answered by giving him wisdom on the spot.

Many times God has done this in my own life. I have counseled women, where I felt like I was in over my head. I would inwardly freak out God-ward, and then He gave me the right words to say at the time that were straight from the heart of God to that person.

God is King of the universe, and He knows all things. He knows the real answer to everything. As a believer, the God of the universe lives inside of us through His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our paraclete or counselor. (Psalm 16:7) He counsels us, and if we ask Him for wisdom He will grant it. (James 1:5)

So what are the things that block us from getting wisdom from God? There are two main reasons:

  • unbelief
  • unconfessed sin

First let’s deal with unbelief. James 1:5 says “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” So we must believe Him at His Word. Is God a liar? If not, He will give us wisdom. James 1:6-8 says that if we doubt and don’t believe that God will give us wisdom, we shouldn’t expect to receive anything from the Lord. So we must believe Scripture. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) So we can ask God for faith if we have no faith. But His Word says He will give us wisdom when we ask, so please believe God at His Word.

Secondly, if you have unconfessed sin in your life, God will not hear you. (Psalm 66:18) So of course He will not give you wisdom.

But if your sin is confessed and you believe that He can give you wisdom, the reason you haven’t received it is probably because you didn’t pause long enough to receive it. Do you race into your prayers, ask God for wisdom, and say Amen, and run off to the next thing? Did you pause and open your heart to God to receive the answer?

Here is the next audio in the prayer series, which will help you to understand how to receive wisdom: (Right click “Save as,” and choose “desktop” to download the audio)

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Posted in Prayer | 8 Comments »

Organizing Your Prayer Life

Friday, January 3rd, 2014

organizing-your-prayer-life

Organizing your prayer life is important so that you can grow in the area of prayer. Set aside a consistent time each day to pray. It can be any time:

  • Early morning
  • During a lunch break
  • While exercising
  • In the evening before bed

Different systems you can use to organize your prayer requests: How do you want to organize your prayer requests for people? My favorite is visual prayer, but let me explain a few different systems to help you keep track of the people you pray for.

  1. Prayer journal: Spiral notebook, leather-bound book, binder with dividers for different categories of people in your life.
  2. Picture journal: Photos of people you pray for, glued to the top of each page in a binder, with their requests underneath.
  3. Recipe Box with 3 by 5 cards: Each card is a different person with requests for each person, with dividers for categories like family, friends, church, missionaries.
  4. Printed list: Typed up prayer requests of different people, or handwritten paper with everyone’s requests.
  5. Visual prayer: My favorite type of prayer, where you picture each person in your mind with their prayer requests pictured around them. You write nothing down. Each category has its own circle. For example, I picture the people from my Bible study sitting around a room, and I picture each person as I pray for them. I usually pray for people in the same order so I don’t forget them. It’s like mind mapping. I explain this more in the audio.

This is the way most of my personal prayers are structured:

  • Silence: Open my heart to God and be still for at least a minute.
  • Confess all known sin. Ask God for unknown sin.
  • Intercession interspersed with thanksgiving. This takes the majority of the time, where I intercede for other people, thanking God for answered requests when I get to those people in my prayers.
  • Praise and adoration: I usually do this through song, separately, unless it comes out spontaneously at the beginning when I have rested in silence before the Lord.

Here is the half-hour workshop on how to organize your prayer life:

For more prayer posts, follow my prayer page on Facebook.

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Posted in Prayer | 11 Comments »

Praying for Missionaries

Friday, December 13th, 2013

praying-for-missionaries

Every believer should be praying for missionaries, specific families on the mission field that are leading people to Christ. Missionaries are on the front lines, attacked by the enemy on every side. If missionaries fall, many people fall. If your church does not support missions, encourage them to do so. And if your church sends out missionaries, please be faithful to pray for them.

The prayer letters do not include the real prayer requests, by the way. Those are the prayer requests that will not be judged and taken wrong, like the conversion of specific people, or progress being made for the Lord. The real prayer requests for the personal lives of the missionaries themselves can’t be given to the thousands of people in the churches because by and large, people are shallow. They yank their support if it looks like missionaries are struggling. But let me tell you: all missionaries are struggling. They struggle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of darkness. (Ephesians 6:12) Shallow Christians in the supporting churches reason that if the missionaries are struggling with sin issues and personal things, God can’t possibly be blessing them, so God must not be in it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Missionaries need prayer about the things that everyone needs prayer for:

  • strong marriages
  • children who follow the Lord
  • ability to resist temptation
  • interpersonal relationships with difficult people
  • health issues from poor conditions like unsanitary water
  • overcoming anger, slander, or any other sin issue that everyone struggles with

Missionaries need prayer about not putting their work for the Lord above their spouse and children. This is very difficult to do. Spiritual work is all-consuming, and pretty soon marriages are distant, or idolatry has grabbed hold of the heart of the husband in the form of TV or any other hobby to escape from the pressures of being in ministry. Usually the idolatry is not a sin in and of itself, but taken in large amounts, a man will neglect his family. Preacher’s kids and missionary’s kids are notoriously rebellious because their parents pour their all into the ministry and not into them.

Please pray for the missionaries that your church supports, and I dare you to take a leap of faith and support a specific missionary family directly. You will find out specific prayer requests from them and be able to pray more effectively because you are personally invested in the work of the missionaries.

To follow news about missions and missionary kids, follow my Missionary Kid Page.

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Posted in Growing Up as a Missionary Kid, Prayer | 6 Comments »

God Provides Through Prayer

Friday, December 6th, 2013

God-provides

Scripture tells us that God provides through prayer, and that we do not receive because we do not ask. (James 4:2) God wants us to come to Him through prayer (Philippians 4:6), and He often chooses not to act until we pray. God has provided for me so many times in my life, specific prayer requests for what I needed. God hears and answers our prayers when we seek Him first. (Matthew 6:33)

The key to God answering your prayers for provision is to give your finances completely to God. This is important, because unless you believe that all of your money belongs to God, you will not have God’s miraculous provision. People that think their money belongs to them often squander their money and then expect God to meet their needs. But they never asked God how to spend His money. They spent their money on self-indulgence (James 5:5) and then had no money left over for food and bills. God will not provide for you when you are a fool.

Of course, the opposite can also be true. You can not spend money on anything and be a complete Scrooge, causing your family to suffer by shivering in the cold because you want to save more money to have a large pile of money in the bank.

This happened to me back before I was married. I considered that my money belonged to me. Because I suffered to save my money, there was no way I would give any of it away. When you ration food to squirrel away money, and you physically suffer to get it, it feels too out of control to give it to someone else who might squander it. I didn’t suffer so that somebody else can squander my money. So I clung to my money as if it belonged to me and not to God. This is one problem with hoarding money. Jesus talks about this in Luke 12:20, where He rebukes the man who dies with a huge pile of money next to him.

I didn’t realize that God actually gave me breath, health, sleep, and talents, and that He could easily take any of these away at any time. My labor is directly related to what God gives me, because He is the one that enables me to work. God owns me because He is Creator. Of course, all the money I make belongs to God.

It was not until I didn’t have enough money to pay bills for 10 years (and I was drowning in debt) that I finally came to a place where I was able to say, “I don’t care if I lose everything and live in a cardboard box with my husband and 4 children.” We were on the point of bankruptcy, and God provided a miracle by changing my heart. I had a deep peace while spiraling further into debt. (I tell this full story in Don’t Fight Over Finances.)

Yielding yourself to God (including your finances) full blast is what opens the floodgates of heaven on your behalf. Because when you seek first His kingdom, He promises that all these things will be added to you. What things? Food, clothing, and everything else you need that is mentioned in Matthew 6:25-34.

Listen to this prayer audio to understand how God provides through prayer:

During the audio, I mention the testimony of God’s provision by giving me back my honeymoon from the rapist. This free audio is here: A Getaway with Your Husband.

God truly does provide for us! I promise this is true if you will only yield to Him in the area of finances. I didn’t even mention George Muller, who prayed each day for food for His orphans, and God provided. Or Corrie Ten Boom, who flew over to the U.S. and didn’t know a single person, but God provided all her needs miraculously. All the way through Scripture, God shows how He is able to provide when situations appear desperate. Our God is our Abba Father, and He owns the universe. Trust Him to meet your needs by yielding to Him!

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Posted in Prayer | 16 Comments »

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