I have had the privilege of praying with three good friends this past week over the phone. Each time I am allowed to go before the throne of God on behalf of another I am blessed beyond words!
Here is the irony… My mother was a real prayer warrior and I always rather resented it because I felt it took time away from being with my sister and me as we grew up. I admit my mother, as a prayer warrior, looked very different than I do. She was quite ill and unable to do a lot outside the house and so she spent hours every day in her bedroom chair praying and reading her Bible. I am overcommitted most of the time, so when someone asks me to pray for them or about something they are facing, sometimes I only have a moment to breathe a quick prayer as I drive or head back to work on the computer. As I am writing this post, I realize that perhaps it was not mother being a prayer warrior that I resented, but rather the fact that she her health didn’t allow my sister and I to experience life with our mother like most of our childhood friends got to. But I have lived a long time really not wanting to ever be a prayer warrior because of these memories.
I have a daily devotional book by C John Miller titled Saving Grace. A few days ago the daily reading scripture was from Matthew 6:9-10 where Jesus says: Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Halfway down the page C John Miller writes, “Prayer is partnership together and with the Father. It’s the most daring thing you can do. The devil wants to convince us that it’s boring, routine, and doesn’t accomplish much, if anything. This is a lie. Prayer is where we… ask God to transform the hearts and lives of us an those around us, and ask Him to reshape the world into what He’s design it to be.”
What incredible words! Praying is the most daring thing we can do because we are partnering with the God of the universe in agreement regarding every potential situation humankind can experience and asking Him to show up and do something supernatural! If the devil can keep us from using this most powerful weapon then we are rendered helpless in the face of life’s challenges. No wonder we are called upon to be prayer “warriors”. We are fighting a war that wages in our hearts and minds telling us not to pray for a multitude of reasons. You and I who dare to pray are prayer warriors!
If I can pray with you about something, please write “pray for me” in the comment section of this post. I will respond to the comment with how you can get in touch with me for prayer.
Let me close with the words to a song we sang in Sunday School when I was growing up. “Dare to be a Daniel, dare to stand alone; dare to have a purpose firm, dare to make it known”. Daniel was known from the time he was a teenage boy as a man who prayed.
He DARED!
caringhansen 