The way God is working behind the scenes is not always seen. I have been writing this blog post for about 2 weeks on and off. I had no idea how God was moving and really how long it would take me to finish this post. Yesterday I went to a woman’s gathering with my church. Guess what the topic was? Praying scripture. How cool is that? when I just was writing this blog about it. So I will be pulling resources from what I learned during the gathering yesterday and share them with you. The greatest part about all this is maybe God was having me hold off on publishing this post because he has something for one of you to learn from what I learned yesterday. I am so excited to share it with you.

Here is my original post:

The emotions are raw. The hurt runs deep. How can you heal from this pain? Again it hurts. How do you get yourself out of this heap of ashes? How do you get out of the pain and hurt? How do you move past it so you can carry on and move forward and get better? Things happen that turn you away from God. How can he allow this kind of pain in your life? How can he just sit there and allow hurt to come onto you and continue to be piled onto you? How do you move past this and onto joy?

What do you do when you don’t know what to do anymore? You know you need to pray. But how do you trust that answers will come? How do you get past the fact that for years you have prayed and God hasn’t changed your situation. But is God our pawn that we pray into the action we want from him? So how do I pray Gods will? How do I choose to humble myself and allow God to work even if its not the way I wanted?

You know you need to. It was drilled into your mind to pray without ceasing, to commit your ways to the Lord. All these things you know but your heart is broken. Your weakness is way to weak to even lift your eyes to heaven. You feel broken, alone and without any hope. Many nights I have these very same feelings. I don’t know what to say or how to pray. I don’t even want to pray for those who have hurt me. I am angry and I don’t want to give that hurt to God.

When I didn’t know how to pray for my husband I started praying from a book call the power of the praying wife. In this book there were prayers already written out. There are so many books like this one out there. If you don’t have the words to say read some from someone else. The power of prayer transformed my life. There were nights I prayed specific things and the next morning God had given a specific answer. I started writing prayers out in my journal. I still do this. I really write better than pray in my head. My mind wonders way too easy. My prayer life has never been really strong. I have struggled with this area. I feel at times I pray for things and never received an answer. So as I wrote prayers in my journal I would highlight the specific request. Then I would write a date I received an answer. I could see Gods hand.

When we pray and don’t get the answer we want. Sometimes God gives an answer. Sometimes it is yes, other times it is no, but I find most of the time it is wait. I have to live by faith and not by sight. I have to believe HE is moving, HE is working, whether I see or feel it or not. I have to trust in faith. Forward Always In Trusting Him. Do you believe He is working in the situation you have been praying about for so long? We have been studying about Abraham’s life in church. Can you imagine waiting so long for God to fulfill his promise to give Abraham a son? If you think you have been waiting a long time imagine being 100 when your wife finally bares a son. But God asked Abraham to believe in the covenant he gave him. He asked him to trust no matter what. Abraham failed miserably at trusting all the time. But hey I totally do too. If you want to read more about Abraham’s journey it is found in Gen. 12- Gen.25.

I by no means have a really great prayer life now. I still struggle to pray as much as I want to, but I do trust that underneath what I see, God is moving mountains and before long I will start seeing big answers to big prayers. And if I don’t I will continue to follow him and trust through whatever journey he walks me through.

Some other praying books:

The power of a praying parent by Stormie Omartian

The power of a praying Wife by Stormie Omartian

The power of a praying grandparent, husband, praying for adult children, teen. All of these are by Stormie Omartian. I highly recommend any of these books and I don’t even read the chapters. I just go right to what I feel the spirit is telling me the struggle is and start praying the prayer she has written out. I then follow it by reading aloud the scriptures that she has after the prayers.

Praying scripture can be a great place to start also and there are tons of books out there to help with this. Or just open up the psalms and start there.

Pray Psalm 40:9-17

Take a moment to pray these scriptures over someone today.  You may want to READ or LISTEN to the chapter before you begin.

Psalm 40:10b     May ______ speak of Your faithfulness and salvation.

Psalm 40:11     Do not withhold Your mercy from ______, O Lord. May Your love and Your truth always protect ______.

Psalm 40:13     Be pleased, O Lord, to save ______. O Lord, come quickly to help him/her.

Psalm 40:16     May ______, who seeks you, rejoice and be glad in You. May ______ love your salvation and always say, “The Lord be exalted!”

Psalm 40:17b     May You think of ______ today. Be ______’s help and deliverer. O God, do not delay.

QUESTION: How often do you speak of the Lord’s faithfulness and salvation?

SHARE: Please share today’s prayers from Psalm 40 with someone via email, text, social media, or word of mouth, &  help us create a movement of praying scripture.

Taken from www.prayscripture.org

Praying Gods Word by Beth Moore

www.ifequip.com

www.seeJesus.net

Some other scriptures given were:

Isa. 26:3

Jn. 14:27

Phil. 4:6

Rom. 5:1

Isa. 26:12

Isa. 55:12

Jn. 16:33

Ps 37:37

Isa. 57:2

Rom. 14:17-19

Ps. 119:165

Ps. 37:11

Ps. 85:8

2 Cor. 13:11

Col. 3:15

Just add a name into the scripture when the word you or them or we or us. For exacple

You will keep Daniel in perfect peace, when Daniels mind is stayed on you, because Daniel trusts in you. Isa. 26:3

Or you could pray Lord Jesus I pray that you would keep Daniel in perfect peace, throughout the day as he faces various trials I pray that Daniels mind would be stayed up you. I pray that it would be because Daniel has put his trust in you.

I hope that this is helpful to many of you as it was inspirational to me. I don’t want to give you everything they gave me because I don’t want to copy their things. But let me tell you if you just start with this scripture in psalms 40 I think you will start seeing a big difference and your prayer life will be transformed. It is incredible what speaking Gods word to God does. It will not return void!

I am so excited to hear your feedback on this and also how it starts to change your prayer life as well as I will leave updates on how my prayer life is changing as I grow in wisdom and faith and as I continue to try to pray the scriptures more often.

I will leave you with the acronym for PRAY

P- Praise- Worship God for who he is, acknowledge his gifts to us.

R- Repent- Confess your sins to Him. Acknowledge your need for Jesus.

A- Ask- Intercede for particular needs in your life and others.

Y- Yield- Surrender your life to follow Jesus.

Jenny Wren

How do you find balance in your life? Do you learn to balance by doing more yoga? Do you have an assistant following you around all day? I wish. Do you give everything you have to do to God and leave what you get done in Gods hands? Sometimes we are juggling so many balls we can’t fit in the good ones. But how do you keep the good things and fit in the best things and have room for everything else?

I saw an analogy done many times before. If you take a jar and fill it with sand then pebbles then large rocks then last of all fill it with water you won’t fit everything in. But if you fit the large rocks in then pour in the smaller pebbles then add the sand and then last add the water everything will fit. It means that we need to fit the important things in first before we fit the other things in.

Right now I am having a hard time with balance. Thanks to so many of you I have started a baking business and I am having tons of orders. But this makes it really tough to balance the important stuff and all the other stuff. Not only am I baking, I am a mom and I am taking care of the household needs. I have been getting overwhelmed this week with all my responsibilities. This week I was baking after bedtime and in between school pick up and supper. This is definitely not a bad thing per-say, but am I leaving room for the big ROCK of my life? Am I putting him into my life jar first?

Today a tech from an internet company we want to change to came over to see if they can install the internet. Well we have too many trees from the top of our house to see the tower but from the back of our shop there is a direct sight. But they would have to bury a trench for the distance from the shop to our house. So if My DH was here we would say no problem he could borrow his parents backhoe and bury it in no time. It would cost us 175 dollars to have the company bury it. So how do I make this kind of discussion? I can’t borrow a backhoe and bury a cable. That is laughable.

I find that when I loose focus of putting those big rocks first in my life. I start getting overwhelmed by the little pebble. The little things like deciding if we should bury the cable or if we should not use that company. Or worrying about things like fiances and if I made the right decision in this or that. But the truth is when I put the rocks in my life first or ROCK, then everything else falls into place.

When I start struggling I ask myself am I trying to cram the Rock in last? or am I making him the first priority in my life so everything else will fit?

So this week when I asked myself , am I putting in the rock first in my life? The answer was no and when I did that the worry and anxiety about my decisions went away. Everyday I have to ask myself am I putting God as the front and center in my life? and If I am not I need to rethink my priorities so that the most important thing fits in first.

Is it just me or when my priorities are not in the right order it seems like everything starts spiraling down hill. My attitude changes, My responses change, My selfishness takes rule into my heart. Its like a big downward spiral that can only be caught by the hand of God. By giving all those things to him and begin thankful for the things you do have. SO I stopped thinking about all I had to get done. I stopped worry about burying a line or not and I just had to rest. Rest in him and his perfect plan for my life. I had to sit back and be thankful. Thank you Lord for each one of my children. Thank you Lord for a husband willing to get help and do what he needs to do for my family. Thank you Lord for a family who cares about me and checks in on me and takes care of my needs. Thank you Lord for the rain and that we aren’t in a drought like my friends are in Texas. Thank you Lord for so many cinnamon roll orders and sustaining me through the busy week. The list could go on and on. I love how Gratefulness can take away grumbling. I love how God loves us so deeply that he cares about the smallest need we have and that we just have to ask him and he provides his answer. I love how he gently leads us back to him and brings us back to a right relationship with him each time we fall away. He is so incredible and I am thankful I can be called a child of God!

Jenny Wren