Power of Prayer

"I believe in miracles, because I believe in God."  Kathryn Kuhlman

       There is power in prayer. I have seen it myself. Even when I did not have any faith for what I was praying, He showed up miraculously. I prayed out of sheer obedience and seeing Him answer those faithless prayers ROCKED MY WORLD!

       He renewed my faith to pray more. After reading Facing Your Giants by Max Lucado I gained the confidence I needed to pray with power! In this book Lucado goes into great detail of how horrible of a person King David looked. He committed adultery, had many wives (even though it was unbiblical, even at that time), got another man’s wife pregnant, then had that man killed, was a horrible father, and the list goes on. However, King David is referred to as “a man after God’s own heart”, twice, by Yahweh Himself. (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22) How can this be?

       Over and over again we read in the scriptures story after story of “ordinary” people who do extraordinary things for the Lord. We all have fallen short of the glory of Elohim. (Romans 2:23) Yet He continues to use all of us to do His work while we are here on earth. Here is King David, who missed the mark A LOT, and then Yeshua comes on the scene and is referred to as the Son of David. Like Lucado says in his book, David blew it… Jesus knew it… Jesus claimed David anyway. That was such a beautiful and profound revelation for me and my confidence in who I was in Christ. David had done things I had not even done, yet Yeshua claimed Him, and Yahweh called him the man after His own heart. Why?

       As I read through Psalms and got a better understanding of King David’s heart, I realized that he was quick to repent, and that he praised through the pain. I felt like these were great qualities to bring into my prayer life. Praising through the pain is what the Word calls a sacrifice of praise. (Hebrews 13:15)

       I have a real-life testimony to share regarding this. In January of 2019 I was admitted to the hospital for what they thought was viral meningitis. I get to the ER and I am freezing, in full clothes and a robe, with a heating pad and I am freezing (this is not like me, I am usually hot natured). The ER nurse took my temperature and told me “Your body is lying to you, you have a fever, you are not freezing, you need to get that robe off!” I thought that was a strange way to put it, that my body was lying to me, but okay. I took off the robe.

       Then I’m in the ER for hours, have TWO spinal taps (I will not get into how deeply I do not enjoy people touching my spine, or even saying the word spine, but needless to say that was traumatizing on its own) because the first one did not work. Lord Yeshua, give me grace! I started having this burning pain in my ribs and it felt like I was suffocating. I physically could not breathe. Again, the same nurse comes in and says again, “Your body is lying to you. You are on all these machines that say you are breathing just fine… breathe!”

       That made me mad at first! This is REAL pain. I am not making this up. I am not having a panic attack. This is not in my mind, this physically HURTS! So, I look up on the ceiling and there was a cactus sticker. I focused on that sticker and breathed in and out, like I was fighting contractions. I could finally breathe, and the pain subsided. What in the world was going on here?

       The second day in the hospital I was getting sad and missing my babies. My headache was not going away, and I was starting to worry. So, I text some people to pray for me, and one of my friends sent a text back that said, “Your body is sending you signals that are untrue. The enemy wants to see if you will receive his lies of pain as truth. Praise through the pain.”

       At first, I was irritated. Excuse me? Like I’m not spiritual enough to have faith to fight the pain? (Prideful much?) Then I remember my nurse saying to me twice, “Your body is lying to you.” Now my friend is saying, “Your body is sending you signals that are untrue.” I was not a professional therapist yet, but I was sensing a pattern here. So, I took my friends advice and listened to Kenneth Hagen’s precious voice on YouTube videos basically just reading healing scriptures. Then I put on praise music and praised through the pain. Y’all if my headache did not go away in minutes!!! Jehovah Rapha (the Lord who heals you) is so precious!

       There are so many verses about how to pray in scripture, but I want to focus on a few that I feel help to guide me in my daily prayers. Simply put, our prayers are super powerful when they consist of scripture. This is where meditating on the word helps. Do not get me wrong, sometimes all you can muster up is, “Yeshua, help me. I need you.” He hears that just as loud!

       If you want to see great power in your prayers and growth in your relationship with your Heavenly Father, declaring His word is a great way to accomplish that. I would suggest reading Kenneth Hagin’s book, Believer’s Authority. It is super short, but super powerful and helpful with growing your prayer life and understanding the authority we have in the spirit.

       Two scriptures I pray every night with my boys, and have since I read his book, are from Ephesian 1:15-23 and 3:14-21 where the Apostle Paul writes out his prayers. Again, your prayers do not have to be sophisticated for the Father to listen, but the entire point of this book is to help us all grow in our relationship with the Lord which in turns helps every other aspect of our lives.

       I wanted to include a “sample prayer”, if you will, but honestly, I prefer praying my own prayers over reading someone else’s that they have written out. Therefore, I will ask the Holy Spirit to help lead you to the scriptures that pertain to what you are going through in this moment to help guide you in your prayer time. Also, the book Prayers that Avail Much had already done that for you! 

       However, I will say this, praying in the spirit, the "groanings" that we do not understand that we talked about in the impartation of the Holy Spirit chapter, will always be the most powerful and life altering prayers. I know that some are nervous to pray in the spirit, I was too. I did not want something “not of God” to come out of my mouth. Once I became open to the Holy Spirit guiding me through it, it has changed my life for the better. There are many scriptures that back up how praying in the spirit can be used in your private prayer life. That special language that is just between you and the Father. I understand that if this is all new to you it sounds crazy but knowing how much it has set me free from so copious amounts torment that wrecked me inside, I would be remiss not to share this freedom with you.