Praying boldly in faith over fear
Photo by Yanin Diaz on Unsplash
Our pray life can be a very natural one, as if talking to a friend, parent or anyone we’re close to husband or wife. God’s not wanting to hear big words or clever prayers - He listens for our hearts to speak to Him.
Recently, as we’ve been going through Richard‘s health challenges people have been wanting to pray with us in the moment, which is quite kind of them. Some of that comes out of love and care and some of it when people pray I can hear comes out a place of discomfort and fear. Whilst all prayer is good, the best kind of prayer we can have is one that build us up and encourages us where we feel our hearts go “boom” in that moment as the prayer connected in our heart when the words were spoken out loud. That’s what people need when they are a hard place - prayers of faith not fear.
Scriptures tell us that the prayer of righteous person can produce a lot meaning when we do pray we can be assured that what we pray as a profound impact. In the book of revelation it speaks about the prayers of the saints that’s the righteous rising up and going into a bowl, when they accumulate enough in that bowl then it’s tipped back down to earth so the impact comes back down to us so there is a sense of building prayer that builds over a period of time. This could be a quick time or long time whichever makes no difference but it does build and has an impact; that is important thing to recall.
I’ve noticed people often pray with through their cultural lens and in the western world our lens can lean to a little bit more of the pessimistic negative side which is often not helpful. The person receiving is listening because our ears are a window for our soul to hear so sometimes we can be prayed for and feel more afraid through those prayers coming away feeling really upset or discombobulated. The best prayers to pray are the ones according to scripture, we can pray the Psalms over people in fact we can pray any scripture over somebody because the scriptures are God breathed and encouraging which puts us in the best place we can be to receive and hear from God. So let’s not pray negative. Let’s pray positive things over people and be a blessing, that way we’re loving our neighbour as ourselves according to the greatest commandment of all.
One way to get into praying with people not out of fear or or urgency is to practice it most days. We had a lovely encounter with the waitress we met at hotel this very week which we were staying in whilst Richards is having on going treatment. We had a conversation and discovered she was a Christian, explaining why we were staying she very gently asked “can I just pray for you?” She did in such a gentle, kind, short and sharp way - beautiful full of the joy of Jesus and that’s how it should be. Not with our own agenda, fear or negativity. It was “boom” in the heart moment and left us feeling good. She prayed simply in perspective with the scriptures and God‘s ways and thoughts.
Enjoy practising praying and remember to stay in the positive zone and out of the negative as God is always good.