Every Tuesday we engage in one big question, topic or idea. You are invited to write in with a suggestion you want to share. I surely do not have all the answers but know that together we can generate some great conversation and have fun in the process. (Feel free to post your topics, questions, and your great thoughts in the comments below!) Together, we will stay informed and equipped about topics that matter!
Today’s Blog Contributor:
Kristin is a licensed counselor who is passionate about seeing women find freedom, healing and restoration in their own lives. She is a writer, counselor, speaker, teacher, mentor and leader to women. She is a storyteller and uses allegorical examples to impart life, freedom, and healing to many. She speaks on a variety of topics including teachings from her writing Healing for Our Soul Garden, which is about the restoration and healing process from sexual abuse; as well as leading and teaching women to grow in a deeper relationship with God. She is available to share according to your needs at your focused retreat, conference or workshop. Find out more about Kristin on her blog at www.healingforoursoulgarden.com.
Today, Kristin continues our blog series on prayer with, Focused Prayer. Enjoy!
Focused Prayer
Have you ever been praying for a situation, person, or thing and realized that your prayers have been led by your emotions or circumstances?
I have. And to be honest, over my life I’ve done it quite a few times!
One of the most beautiful and powerful things that I have learned in my faith walk with Jesus is focused prayers. When I was a new believer I was blessed and honored to be a part of our ladies prayer group at my previous church in California. I was a young twenty-something and God connected me with a group of amazing, spirit-filled, and powerful women of God who modeled to me spiritual warfare, the role of a intercessor and spiritual strategies through prayer.
These women prayed for me, with me, and loved me and I will forever cherish the memories of those 15 years with those intercessors for Jesus!
I learned to not let my circumstances dictate my prayer, but instead to seek God’s battle plan and the leading of the Holy Spirit in how to pray. Focused prayer is one of those areas that God led me to do again and again in my life.
Focused prayer is taking God’s word and praying that over your life, situations, circumstances, and the people you love instead of praying out of our own opinions or emotions.
Four steps to focused prayer:
1. What does God’s word say? Whatever you are facing, what does God’s word say? Dig into the scriptures, find those scriptures that fit your life, your circumstances, and your situations. Then wait and see what God has to say to you through His word.
2. Ask the Holy Spirit how you should pray based on what His word says.
3. Take those scriptures and turn them into a prayer.
4. Don’t pray from your emotion, pray from God’s word and the leading of the Holy Spirit. Continue to pray what God’s word says and not from the place of your emotions or opinions. As you do this God does an amazing and beautiful thing – HE CHANGES US. Faith rises up in us. No longer are we swayed by what we feel, but instead made stronger by what God’s word says.
I have done this focused prayer in many different forms and seasons in my life. Praying over my family, my marriage, our home, ministry, my relationship with God and so much more. Praying this way has never led me astray. I have seen again and again the power of God working in and through my focused prayer in such a life changing, spirit-led, and anointed way.
In Hebrews chapter 4 (GW) we read:
God’s word is living and active. It is sharper than any two-edged sword and cuts as deep as the place where soul and spirit meet, the place where joints and marrow meet. God’s word judges a person’s thoughts and intentions.
God’s word is living and active! Let’s connect with that source of life that God has given us and use it as a way to pray, to draw closer to Jesus, and to pray spirit-led prayers.
What do you think?