“As a child of God, you ought to expect God to answer your prayers. Do you ask God to do something without adjusting your life to what you are praying? If you are praying for revival, how are you preparing for its coming? If you are praying for forgiveness, are you still living with guilt? If you have asked God to provide for your needs, do you remain worried and anxious? Ask God to increase your faith, and then begin living a life that reflects absolute trust in Him.” Henry Blackaby
Dear intercessors,
We all want God to answer our prayers. We believe in the power of prayer, but when it comes down to our own individual lives and our own problems, we often don’t have the faith to believe God will answer. The times we are living in are difficult. We are often trapped by our unbelief and fear, but God is preparing us for the end-time harvest. He wants to enlarge our territory. He wants to bless us with increase, because His nature is to care and bestow divine favor on us.
We are the ones who limit Him because of our lack of trust and our fear of stepping out in faith. The truth is that the things we do for God should be outside of our own ability and should be trusting in His supernatural ability. When we back away from dependence and trust in God, we are not living by faith. He wants us to trust and obey His Word. He wants us to be strong and courageous. We need to be willing to attempt things big enough that unless God’s steps in, we are sure to fail. This is the kind of trust and dependence He is looking for in our life. We need not be shaken. He can break through every obstacle. He is the God of the impossible!
A Prayer for Trusting God in Hard Times
Lord, I thank You that You are the God of the impossible. You can do anything. I want to trust in Your ability and not my own. Teach me to see difficulties in my life from Your perspective. Help me to focus on You and Your power. I want to be like Joshua and Caleb who believed in a good report and focused on You even in hard circumstances (Numbers 14:7-9). My responsibility is to carefully read, trust, and obey Your Word. Today I bring before You this difficulty in my life . Help me not to fear but to trust You in this situation. I declare my faith in Your ability to fulfill Your promises to me. You will fight for me and win the battles in my life. You are mighty, powerful, righteous and true.
I have nothing to fear with You on my side. I will be strong and courageous even in hard times. I will not be terrified or discouraged, for the Lord my God will be with me wherever I go (Joshua 1:9). You will never leave me or forsake me (Joshua 1:5). I do not need to figure everything out. You already know the best plan for my life. I will not try any man-made method to do only what You can do. Show me Your supernatural power. Teach me how to walk by faith and pray breakthrough prayers. I choose to have faith in Your ability to break through every obstacle in my life. Just like Joshua, You will give me the land and every place where my feet step (Joshua 1:3). “Through you we push back our enemies; through your name we trample our foes. I do not trust in my bow, my sword does not bring me victory; but you give us victory over our enemies, you put our adversaries to shame. In God we make our boast all day long, and we will praise your name forever” (Psalm 44:5-8).
“Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (Psalm 16:5-11). In Jesus name, amen.“Faith does the impossible because it lets God undertake for us, and nothing is impossible for God. How great – without qualification or limitation – the power of faith is! If doubt can be banished from the heart and unbelief is made a stranger there, what we ask from God will surely come to pass. Prayer throws faith on God and God on the world. Only God can move mountains, but faith and prayer move God.”
Together in the Harvest,
Debbie Przybylski
Intercessors Arise International
International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC)
www.crosswalk.com
Trust in God
(Proverbs 3:5-6) “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
Lord God, I come to you today and I submit my life and everything that is going on to You. Fill me with your Spirit so that I will know Your way and Your plan. Make the path straight before me today, in Jesus Name, Amen
The AuthorMOP
www.missionariesofprayer.org
“For your salvation I wait, Lord.”
This final prayer is the last prayer in the book of Genesis, and is a very brief prayer. Though we might be inclined to think that the best prayers are those that contain more than a phrase or a sentence, brief prayers are as valid as any other. After all, if prayer is about relationship, then the communication will be diverse: sometimes it will be deep, sometimes it will be simple; sometimes it will be lengthy, sometimes it might be a few words. I might pass my wife in kitchen and say “you look great today.” I might have a moment between business meetings and say “God, thank you for caring for me.” When you have a little time between work tasks, or family responsibilities, or any brief space of time, use the short prayers of the Bible as a model (and there are many, as we shall see).
Here, in this prayer, Jacob/Israel simply prays, “For your salvation I wait, Lord.” Despite the brevity of this prayer, it sums up much of the story and meaning of Genesis. The characters in Genesis often demonstrate their lack of trust in God: we have seen it in Abraham (“she’s my sister!”). They act selfishly at times (tricking an old father out of an inheritance). Sometimes, they are unwilling to wait for God’s plan to unfold as He wills (Abraham having a child with Hagar), and some of them even betray and imprison others (Joseph’s older brothers). In other words, they are us. We also lack faith and trust in God when things get tough, we act selfishly regardless of the cost to others, we try to make things happen on our own, and we even betray and hurt others.
Through the lengthy story of Jacob, we have seen him grow in maturity and faith. From an immature, conniving scoundrel to a strong, faithful patriarch, he now trusts God completely. He knows Who controls the universe; he know where his hope lies. What a wonderful time for us all to look forward to: when we can simply rest and trust in the care of God! Probably, Jacob still had his moments, for none of us reach perfection in our relationship with God. But now, his character is typified by faith and maturity.
The prayer consists of one simple line, yet it is filled with meaning: Jacob has learned that he must simply trust and wait: salvation comes from God, and it comes when He decides.This may be a difficult concept for many of us, probably more so for us in a world of a world where so many things come fast: food, phone calls, text messages, news, cash, and so on. We are not very good at waiting for anything. It follows that we are probably not very good at waiting on God, either. That is probably why, over fifty times in scripture, we are urged to do just that. Maybe, instead of “wait for the Lord,” we would prefer the saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” Not only is that phrase not found in the Bible, but the concept behind it is what caused Abram, Sarai, Hagar, and Ishmael so much heartache and suffering that lasts through the centuries to this very day in the Middle East. The concept of “waiting on the Lord” is an important one for us to learn, and we will encounter it many times in our journey through the prayers of the Bible.
For your prayers today, you might employ two concepts or practices from this brief prayer. First, you could adopt the practice of occasionally offering brief, one-line prayer. A prayer with an opening, a body, and a closing is useful, helpful, and proper. But a prayer does not have to have those elements. It does not have to have a lot of words.
Look over the fourteen prayers we have examined in Genesis. Use what you have learned to write down two or three short prayers you could use today. Maybe one each for various types: a petitions, a blessing, a vow, an intercession. Alternatively (or additionally), you might take this prayer of Jacob’s and use it today whenever you have a brief moment. Look it up in different translations, and choose one you like, or mix and match. Pray these prayers today as a reminder to slow down, to be patient, and to wait for God’s plan to unfold, rather than trying to force your own plan on Him.
Take some time to write down what your experience was like in praying these brief prayers.
Like this content? Become a Patron and get full access to posts, audio version, podcast, free books and more.
prayingthruthebible.com
