Great Commission Churches

December 2006

Dear Sisters,

As we celebrate the season of our Savior's birth, we enjoy creating or buying presents for the people we love. Christmas is definitely the time for giving gifts. Well, how about the gift that "keeps on giving"-prayer!

Karen Haring has been giving and receiving many blessings since she has been praying verses and specific prayers straight from the Word of God, for her friends and family. This is an example I want to follow! And so I pray for you all, dear sisters in Christ, that you would know "what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe." (Eph. 1:19)

Merry Christmas!

Sandy

Praying God's Word

By Karen Haring, Chestnut Ridge Community Church, Morgantown, WV

I guess it all started back when I was a student at Ohio State. I had a couple of close friends who weren't Christians, and one became antagonistic towards me. I found it hard to love her the way I knew I should. That's when I came across John 17:26:
"I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."

Wow, what a promise! The love that God loves Jesus with is IN ME! I not only memorized that verse, I began to claim that promise, and pray constantly that God's love in me would work through me. God answered that prayer by changing my heart. I knew that I had a real love for this friend that could only come from God's love inside of me. God gave me great peace in the midst of those circumstances.

I'm sure over the years I spent some more time "praying God's Word", but it wasn't until four or five years ago that I began seriously praying God's word again. After hearing Kristin Hagen speak one year about fasting, I had begun fasting and praying at different times and I saw God answer some really big prayers. Once during those prayer times, I realized how many specific prayers God has given us in His Word. I started by jotting down a few verses that Paul had written as prayers for people in the different churches. It encouraged me to search for more of the same.

Then a friend was going through some struggles, and I decided that the best way to pray for this friend was to pray God's Word for them. I found specific verses and prayed them daily for this friend. One of the verses was, "May the Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance." (2 Thessalonians 3:5) I could see God really working! It was very inspiring to hear things come out of my friend's mouth that were the exact things I had been praying for! Of course, this made me want to pray God's Word even more!

I wrote down verses to pray for my husband and my kids. I not only wrote down promises to pray, but things like: "With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of His calling, and that by His power He may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Thessalonians 1:10-12) In the midst of all of this, I also came across some prayer cards by Stormie Omartian that have some great scriptural prayers.

Now I have pages of verses that I pray every day for family and friends. I keep them in a small book that I take with me everywhere, so that when I have spare moments, I can pray. There are so many side benefits to praying God's Word. One is that it's easy to memorize verses when you pray them every day! Also, I'm able to serve people and help them more specifically as I am filling my mind with God's Words and praying God's Word specifically for those around me. And finally, my prayer life has grown through God's Word. I find that God is changing me.