Postured for Purpose: Intercessory Prayer Guide
It's a new week! We have shuffled up and selected new names to pray for over the next 7 days! This is part two to last weeks blog post: How to Intercede, and if you haven't read it, go check it out! This week, we are pressing into interceding for one another to be postured for purpose.
What does that mean?
Posture means:
Relative placement or arrangement
A condition or state under certain circumstances
An attitude or way of behaving: a mental or spiritual attitude.
Purpose is:
The object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or goal
To be postured for purpose means:
To come into alignment with the foreordained, predestined, and pre-appointed perfect will God had in mind for one's life.
In the book of Psalms, we encounter one of the most beautiful prayers about God's purpose for us. Go read all of Psalm 139, but let's quickly look at vs. 13-16:
For You formed my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise You,
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Marvelous are Your works,
and I know this very well.
My frame was not hidden from You
when I was made in secret,
when I was woven together
in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all my days were written in Your book
and ordained for me
before one of them came to be.
The Big Problem:
Many people have no idea what their purpose in life is, so they find themselves searching for answers in all kinds of things. They can be easily tossed to and fro with new information, new teachings, new trends, and new doctrines, yet completely miss hearing from the One who has revealed in His Word that He already knew what they would be.
When you know Who you are and Who's you are, and Who you were made in the image and likeness of, you are not in an identity crisis. Everything flows from that awareness.
For example, God predestined for me to be an evangelist. Even before accepting salvation, I was recruiting people for a whole heap of things. He purposed me to encourage others to be transformed through a real, authentic, and personal relationship with Him. It's something I cannot shake. It comes out of me without me trying. It flows out of me through different ways (writing, painting, creating, etc.), but it is always an extension of the purpose of which I was created and why I was called out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light at 21 years old. My experiences and applying the Word of God to my every day life has given me a grace to be able to reach others on that level. I walk boldly and confidently in it by grace.
However, before I could even get to the point of clarity, I, like so many others was confused. I believe much of that confusion was because my life was out of order... all areas of it. God wanted to reveal to me what He desired, and He was probably speaking the whole time, yet I was living in chaos, noise, and could not see those blind spots myself.
It was a woman of God who prayed me through a lot of that dysfunction, hitting many of these prayer targets (included below) I'm sure. Gradually, I started to hear more clearly.
We All have Blind Spots:
The reality is that we all have blind spots. A blind spot is an area that one cannot see because of an obstruction.
There are some things we are unable to pinpoint within ourselves.
There may be some things that we have in our lives that are hindering us from growing and becoming all that God desires and reaching our full potential.
These can be habits, mindsets, or relational dynamics that are holding us back.
There can be roots of bitterness that have warped our perception and hardened our hearts.
It can be that, although we say we are Christians, we have never truly had a revelation of what that means for on a personal level. We've just been playing church and going through the motions. Consequently, we can only grow to the level of our understanding.
Sometimes we see something in others that we first need to check ourselves on and take before the Lord to see if we do the exact same thing. However, there are some things that we can see in others that they can't see at all, but we can pray for God to reveal to them. These things can also be strongholds, in which the Bible reveals to us that "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds." (2 Corinthians 10:4)
What we can accomplish by praying for others:
Bring those blind spots to God, so He can convict, reveal, and renew.
Tackle the spiritual war, so there can be breakthrough in the natural.
Release our own shortcoming of wanting to control and change, and give it back over to the only one that can.
Demolishes our self-centered, self-focused, and me-me-me nature.
Encourages us as we witness their growth and change, which builds our faith, and brings God glory.
As stated last week, interceding for others is like helping them lift the load of a heavy weight. They may not be strong enough to do it for themselves, so we undergird them through prayer and bring their needs to the throne room of God.
I'm sure that many of us can testify that it was because of someone else's prayers for us that we are even here today. We don't have to wait until we are someone's "praying grandma" before we extend ourselves in this capacity!
Here is this weeks prayer guide with updated scripture/prayer points:
Prayer
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Who will you be praying for this week?
Until next time,
