Contending for Truth
It’s impossible for me to engage God and pray in Jesus’ name, and have nothing happen.
I have the pleasure of actively interceding for several small businesses in our city. It’s been a wonderful addition to the praying environments in which I usually find myself.
One business owner really wants to grow a Kingdom focus inside his company and has invited his employees to hear what’s on his heart and join him for 30 days of “contending." He wants them to believe for something in their lives that hasn’t happened fully, or perhaps not at all. Some of the questions he’s asking: “How does prayer/God ‘fit’ into your life? Why do we pray? What does prayer do? Do you pray at all?” His employees are a mix of believers and unbelievers, but they all know he loves Jesus and respect him greatly.
For those participating, the challenge was laid out to declare different biblical truths aloud 100 times daily. The goal will be that repeated action helps untie faulty belief systems and reshape new ones. “What you think on, you will eventually become.” It’s been a fun practice for me while driving around the city. Those that see me at stoplights must think me rather intense, as I declare with force the different passages I’ve chosen. We’ve even been given a counter/clicker to help count our prayerful declarations each day, just a way to keep it real. As I repeat, emphasizing different words, I feel confidence rise on the inside, and boldness on the outside. Makayla has taken up the clicker when she rides with me, adding her sweet prayers of declarations from the back seat. I’ve done such things in the past, and having Makayla join in has been an unexpected benefit.
One biblically rooted thought that I’ve been declaring is, “It’s impossible to engage God, pray in Jesus’ name and have nothing happen.” Some would say that’s a no-brainer, but I’ve found conviction absent at times. Rolling that phrase around with the Lord, I find it informing my thoughts, prayers and actions.
I prayed for a young man Sunday morning at church and, strengthened with fresh resolve, I felt real authority accompanying my words. God was present and something was happening. Concluding the prayer, I asked this young man to look me straight in the eye. As he did I told him how much God loved him, how He felt about him, how proud He was of him. Tears filled his eyes and he looked away a couple of times, (It’s a deeply personal thing, looking directly into someone’s eyes) but he kept coming back, drinking in the words of truth God intended him to experience just then.
Something did happen in that moment. I don’t know exactly what, but judging from the hug he gave me and tears that were flowing, it must have been something good. He walked out alone, wiping his eyes, but with a big, broad smile.
When you declare truth aloud for your own ears to hear, it fills you with faith. It’s how God designed it.
“…faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Romans 10:17
The voice we hear the most and believe the best is our own. Make sure you’re speaking the words of Jesus’ truth to yourself and to others.
Some of these employees aren’t prepared for what will transpire in the weeks to come. I look forward to hearing of the shifts in perspective, freedom from stuck places, the advancing of hope that they are sure to experience.
As I click away, declaring these prayers, I feel the benefit myself. How often I’ve prayed without a sense that something is going to happen. May God shift us all into the truth that “it’s impossible for nothing to happen.”
What are you declaring that your ears are believing?