The Prayer of Blessing

One year I gave my six-year-old daughter, Amanda, a small, decorative box. Inside it I put a small piece of jewelry that she had been wanting for a long time. When she unwrapped the gift and saw the box, she squealed and remarked on every detail. “Oh, Mommy, this is so beautiful! Look at the pink roses and the painted ribbons, and see how tiny the gold lock is. This is the prettiest box I’ve ever seen!”

She was about to put the box away in her room when I said, “Amanda, open it up.”

“Oh, thank you, Mommy! The pearl necklace I wanted!” she squealed as she ran off to put it on.

I sat there thinking, She would have been happy with just the pretty box. And then I thought of how our heavenly Father gives us gifts, and often we don’t unwrap them or possess all He has for us because we don’t see them or we don’t realize they are there for us or we don’t ask for them. We let His gifts sit unopened.

The Prayer of Blessing for God’s Power

God’s power is a gift for us to use, among other things, for the healing of our souls, and anyone wanting emotional health and restoration must have access to it.

God wants you to know the “exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe” (Ephesians 1:19), so He can “strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (Ephesians 3:16 niv). You can’t conjure up, take, or demand God’s power; you can only receive it from Him. Oswald Chambers says that God’s purpose for me is “that I depend on Him and His power now.” By depending on God’s power instead of your own, you are fulfilling God’s purpose for your life.

If you feel powerless and weak in the face of your circumstances, then thank God that even though you are weak, He is not. He says,

My strength is made perfect in weakness. — 2 Corinthians 12:9

Just as Jesus was crucified in weakness and lives in all power now, the same is true for us if we come to Him in weakness. Our power comes from the Holy Spirit working in us. Jesus told His disciples,

You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. — Acts 1:8

We are always in need of a fresh flow of the Holy Spirit. Ask for one daily. Every morning, say, “God, I need a fresh flow of Your Holy Spirit power working in me this day. I am weak, but You are all-powerful. Be strong in me this day.” This is a power-full prayer of blessing.

Don’t be a victim of your circumstances. Don’t allow yourself to be tormented. Don’t simply sit back when life seems to be falling apart. Don’t live your life in terms of human energy. Ask for the blessing of God’s Holy Spirit power. Let His power enable you to rise above the limits of your life.

If you ever become overwhelmed by how much you think you have to do to arrive at complete wholeness, or if you have doubts about whether you can actually do all that’s required, then you need to remind yourself that the Holy Spirit accomplishes wholeness in you, as you allow Him. Let Him do it. All you have to do is tell God that you want His ways to become your ways, and then take one step at a time in the right direction as it is revealed to you. You only need to be concerned with the step you’re on.

What good is God’s power to you if you never receive and use it? Open the gift of power and blessing He has given you. Your life depends on it.

The Prayer of Blessing for Faith

Faith is a spiritual muscle that needs to be exercised in order to prevent atrophy, which makes our entire spiritual being weak. Faith is first a decision, then an exercise in obedience, then a gift from God as it is multiplied. Our first step of faith is taken when we decide we will receive Jesus as our Savior. After that, every time we decide to trust the Lord for anything, we build that faith. Whenever we decide not to trust God, we tear it down. Faith is our daily decision to trust God.

Faith is a gift from God because He enables us to believe, but we have to obey by building on that faith.

How do we start building faith? The first step is to be totally open and honest about any doubt in God’s ability or His faithfulness to provide for our every need. Doubt emanates from a lie of the enemy, which says that God is not all-powerful. If you’ve listened to this lie, confess it as sin.

The next step is to fill your mind with the Word:

Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the Word of Christ. — Romans 10:17

Reading the Word daily, regularly submitting to Bible teaching, and speaking the Word aloud will build trust. Your mouth and heart have to be united in this. Because your prayers will only be as strong as your faith in God, it’s always good to read the Word before you pray. Ask God to give you faith every time you do and try to keep reading until you sense faith rising in your heart. Faith leads the way to answered prayer.

Whenever I’m afraid or doubt that my life is secure, I read the Bible until I sense God’s peace in me. The more I read, the more hope I have. Then, when I pray, I’m confident that God will answer my prayers.

The Bible says of the people who could not go into the Promised Land, “They could not enter in because of unbelief” (Hebrews 3:19). Don’t let that happen to you. Choose to enter into all that God has for you by praying the prayer of blessing for faith. When it has blossomed, faith gives birth to hope. Hope and faith together give you a vision for your life.

The Prayer of Blessing for Wholeness

God created the world by speaking it into existence. Since we are made in His likeness and His Spirit dwells in us, we have the power to speak our own worlds into existence too. When we speak negatively about ourselves or our circumstances, we cut off the possibility of things being any different.

Early in my walk with the Lord I spoke many negatives like, “I’m a failure,” “I’m ugly,” “Nothing ever goes right,” “Nobody really cares about me,” until one day the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart through Proverbs 18:21:

Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

A quick inventory of the things I had said aloud and in my mind revealed that I had been speaking words of death and not life. This thought was frightening. One clear example of what this Scripture was saying to me had to do with my speech problems. I’d had them since childhood and was teased about them all through school. As soon as I was old enough to work and afford professional help, I worked with a speech therapist every week. I practiced day after day, year after year, to gain what seemed to be only a little improvement.

Two years after Michael and I were married, we did a few music concerts together, and I was asked to speak on healthcare in weekly classes at church. In spite of all my hard work with the therapist, I still lost my voice about halfway through each engagement due to the tension in my neck. I became deeply discouraged and felt like a failure.

“I’ll never be able to speak right,” I cried time and again in despair and frustration. But as I spoke those words one day, the Lord spoke to my heart saying, You’re bringing death to your situation because you’re not speaking the truth about it.

“What does that mean, Lord? Am I supposed to deny what’s really happening to me?” I asked God.

Do not speak what you think to be truth or what seems to be truth, He replied to my heart, but rather speak what you know to be the truth of my Word.

Over the next few days, certain Scriptures came to my attention. Isaiah 32:4:

The stammering tongue will be fluent and clear

and

I have put My words in your mouth. — Isaiah 51:16

After that, each time I was tempted to give in to discouragement, I spoke those Scriptures to myself and said, “Thank You, Lord, for helping me to speak slowly and clearly. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Praise You, Lord that You will give me the words to say and anoint them to have life.”

I purposely cleared out other negatives from my speech. I no longer said, “I’m a failure,” because God’s Word says the opposite is true about me. I stopped saying, “I’m hopeless,” and started acknowledging God as the hope of my life.

Soon after, when I was asked to speak at a large women’s meeting, I took all my fears about it to the Lord in prayer and didn’t let my mouth say that I was going to fail. I spoke God’s truth instead of voicing my own negative opinions. As a result, my talk went so well that an entire speaking ministry opened up to me.

We often speak what we hear the devil saying to our minds or we repeat to ourselves what someone else said to us years ago. “You’re worthless. You’ll never amount to anything.” The Bible says, “You are snared by the words of your mouth” (Proverbs 6:2). That includes our silent messages to ourselves as well as what we speak aloud.

When talking about yourself, speak words of hope, health, encouragement, life, and purpose — they are God’s truth for you. Wipe words of hopelessness, doubt, and negativity from your vocabulary. What you speak may seem harmless to you, but it affects your body and soul.

It promotes either health and life or sickness and death.

Walk in obedience to the Lord by only speaking words that reflect the wholeness you desire. God has so much for you. Learn to pray His way so He can overflow you with His blessings beyond what you can imagine.

Excerpted with permission from Seven Prayers That Will Change Your Life Forever by Stormie Ormartian, copyright Thomas Nelson.

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Your Turn

This week, let’s assess our doubt levels and be honest with God about it. Let’s ask Him to grace us with faith to believe and fill our minds with the promises in His Word. Pay attention to how often your first instinct is to speak words of death over yourself, negative and harsh declarations, the kind that you would never want to hear someone you love speaking about themselves that way. Stop, and change those words. Rephrase with grace. We want to open up every good and perfect gift the Lord has for us! Come join the conversation on our blog! We want to hear from you!