How’s Your Prayer Life?
One of my all-time favorite movies is War Room; a faith-based drama about a seemingly successful couple, Tony and Elizabeth Jordan, whose marriage is actually falling apart due to bitterness, work pressure, and temptation. The theme of the movie is the transformational power of strategic prayer and spiritual warfare in overcoming life’s battles. Below is a snippet of one of my favorite scenes:
So… how’s the temperature of your prayer life?
I think it’s fair to say at the pace of our culture that most of us have seasons of being lukewarm. Which is why I love the opportunity to remind myself and others of the critical role that prayer has in our lives.
I remember watching War Room when it first came out in theatres in August 2015. I went with Denis and my parents who happened to be in town at the time. By this time in our marriage, we had been waiting and praying for our family to be formed for over 7 years. So, by this point my prayer life had become stale. Let’s just say I had prayed for God to provide us a family once a day over that 7-year period – that would have been 2,555 prayers prayed up until this point. I was tired of praying the same thing over and over again. But leaving that movie theatre I was convicted to pray with fervor again. I took the movie to heart and cleaned out a section of my closet and turned it into my own war room for strategic and specific prayer. I began to renew my trust in God’s promises that He wasn’t done writing our story and that He had good things in store for us. I created my own prayer journal to write down my prayers and record the prayers that God was answering. Little did I know that from the time of watching that movie just 54 days later I would receive the most life-changing phone call of my entire life. The call where our adoption consultant informed me that we had been matched for adoption with a baby girl! You can image how excited I was to write that miracle of an answered prayer in my prayer journal!
I’ve continued to use that prayer journal over the years, but as life often does, there have been ebbs and flows in the “temperature” of my prayer life. I’m encouraged to keep the intensity of my prayer life high when I reflect on scriptures that encourage us to live out this lifestyle:
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
1 Peter 5:7, “Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you.”
Philippians 4:6-7, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”
I hope you’re encourage as well to turn up the heat and pray with a fervent heart for what you’re expecting God to do in your life. And to keep track of how God moves in your life whether that be in a journal or an app (I love the Echo app). And as you continue to pray, it’s important to note that not every prayer is answered with a “yes”, nor is that the goal. The goal is to bring our requests to God with an open hand with the trust and belief that He is sovereign, and He will only provide good answers for us. Tara Leigh Cobble from the Bible Recap puts it this way, “Yes is an answer, no is an answer, wait is an answer. All valid answers. If I only say God answers my prayer when it’s a ‘yes’ that’s pretending like ‘no’ and ‘wait’ weren’t options. When in fact, when God tells me ‘no’ or when God tells me ‘wait’ that is His kindest possible answer.”
So however God answers, keep praying with an intensity that knows and trusts that God hears you and is working while you’re waiting. He’s a good God who wants to hear from His children.
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