I try to pray in The Spirit when I pray, and during my prayer I seek God for what to say to Him, and one of my goals is to pray for others and not just for myself. I don’t feel that prayer should be selfish, and for all that God has done for me, I don’t like going to Him just to have my hand out. I’ve taught Sunday School and Children’s Church for the past 15 years (I know I’m not that old, but working with kids has always been a natural part of ministry for me.), and in teaching kids about prayer, I always make sure that they know that they have to be respectful of/ to God because of who He is, and I remind them that prayer is their tool and way to talk to God. I also make sure that they know that no matter how young, or how small they are, God loves them and listens to them, even if He doesn’t say anything at that exact moment.
Personally, some of my prayers are as simple as “Help me Holy Ghost. Amen.” and sometimes, I literally get on my face and travail as long as I have to, saying all that I need to.
I say all of that to this, God is showing out! There have been 3 instance this year alone, (Yes, I know that we are only 8 days in.) where God has honored my prayer concerning myself and others to where I have found myself with shocked and in “Awwweee”, even questioning if I was ready for that quick turnaround.
God spoke to me a few weeks ago about this year, and I won’t go into detail, but He is doing just what He said.
I talk a lot about having faith that something is manifested before you even pray for that thing.
Over the years, my prayers have changed from physical or tangible, to more spiritual. I used to focus more so on living a good life and having the things that I wanted like car, purse, job and etc. But now, ( letting y’all in and being completely transparent) my biggest and most constant prayer is for God to allow me to have peace, comfort and be okay with losing my daughters father. I pray daily that God allows me to mourn him healthily and to begin to live my life again. (When I say ‘mourn healthily’, I don’t want to want to lay in the bed all day and cry. I don’t want to cry myself to sleep every night. I don’t want to feel like I am creating a fiction of us being together and being a family only to escape the reality that he is gone. I have to have faith that God is able to bring me restoration to my heart, to my spirit and to my faith, before I even ask Him to.
Over the past 3 years, I haven’t always been able to pray for myself, but in seeing God answer my prayers on behalf of others, my faith was restored in who He is to me. I remember praying, praying, praying, praying, AND praying for my daughter to be healed when she was in NICU. Lord knows that I needed to be healed physically myself, but I couldn’t pray for me because my faith was broken regarding myself, but He honored the faith that I had regarding His ability to move for my daughter. (I knew that He could heal my daughter and I believed that He would but I didn’t believe that He would heal me.) Through my faith was restored in God, my Healer.
I believe that God grants us things that we haven’t even asked for because of our hearts true desire for Him to bless others. You can go to him with an ulterior motive and expect Him to move, but try praying for others, watch how your prayer life will change, but watch how God begins to bless you beyond what you expected.
I’m pressing through, in prayer for my healing!