Would you like to “lack nothing”? Here is a quick thought on how:
Tag Archives: Prayer
One of the Biggest Temptations for People of Prayer
It might be not be what you think, but slip ups in this area can mess up your effectiveness very quickly. It falls in the area of not being trusted. As people of prayer we are often entrusted with information that is confidential in nature. In my work of ministering to pastors it happens all the time. This is for a couple of reasons:
1. People will trust you with things if they know you will pray for it.
People who know that you are a person of prayer will give you information about their needs. They are looking for someone they know will not just say they will pray about it, but who will actually pray about the need. But if word gets out that you can’t be trusted with that information, because you are going to blab it to everyone, you may miss some prayer assignments that God wanted you to pray.
2. God will trust you with things He knows you will talk to Him about.
God will bring into His confidence people who He is confident that He can share His heart. He told Abraham, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen 18:17) A prayer that I pray often is, “God reveal your secrets to me.” But God is looking to see if I can handle the information that He shares in an appropriate manner. We need to practice in being trusted.
A pastor that had a great prayer team around him had one main qualification to be on the team. Anyone on his personal prayer team must not, “be given to sins of the tongue.” Is this an area that you need to strengthen to go to the next exciting level that God would have for you in your ministry of prayer?
4 Things to Pray with Confidence for the Countries of the World
One of the things that I find as I travel and speak on the subject of prayer is people who do not pray with boldness. One of the reasons that it is easy to struggle with confidence in prayer is the question, “Is what I am praying the will of God?”
One of the ways to pray with confidence is to pray the scripture. If you are praying what God has already expressed as His desire, you are basically praying, “Your will be done.”
So how about the countries of the world? I use the world prayer map to pray for every country of the world every single month. If you pray for about 8-10 counties every day you will get through every country. But what do you pray? Right on the map there is a list of 4 scriptures to pray that I now pass along to you.
1. Father, I ask for open doors to spread the Gospel.
“Devote yourself to prayer that God may open a door to proclaim Christ.”(Colossians 4:2-3)
2. Father, I ask for open minds to receive the Gospel
“I am sending you to them [the lost] to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light.” (Acts 26:17)
3. Father, I ask for open hearts to embrace the Gospel.
“For God made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:6)
4. Father, I ask for open heavens, that the Gospel may run swiftly.
“Open up, O heavens, and pour out your righteousness. Let the earth open wide so salvation and righteousness can sprout up together. (Isaiah 45:8)
Those are great opening places to start. It may lead you to pray for workers for the harvest field of that country (Matthew 9:37) or move to some of the strategic prayers for a city.
It helps me as I learn more about a country. My wife and daughter and I are looking up tourism videos for countries on YouTube and watching a few each week to learn about countries. You can also visit Operation World to look up specifics of certain countries.
If you do these things before you know it you will have way more to talk to God about than you have time to pray for these things.
To order your own free copy of the world prayer map visit here. Info from the World Prayer Map is copyright Dick Eastman. Used with permission.