Today, we end our ten days of prayer and fasting. Looking back, we have covered inviting God to move in our lives, to clean our hearts, breaking negative relationships, and repositioning/refocusing our relationships with God, the Word, and Holy Spirit. We have prayed over our homes and families and our church. Today, as we end, let’s focus our prayers on this “new season”.

2 Corinthians 1:9 God is faithful (reliable, trustworthy and therefore ever true to His promise, and He can be depended on); by Him you were called into companionship and participation with His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

• 2:41 Salvations
• 2:42 Community / Prayer Meetings
• 2:43 God fear and awe / wonders / signs / miracles 
• 2:44 Unity 
• 2:45 Giving 
• 2:46 & 47 Hunger / Meeting Together / Strengthening of One Another 

Yesterday, we shifted our prayer focus moving outwardly praying for our families. Today, let’s continue that outward focus as we pray over our homes and our land.

Praying over our homes and land should be a consistent part of our spiritual lives. I like to view it as I do physically knowing that my house needs to be cleaned and there are times that it needs cleaning out. Closets, cabinets, and drawers are too full, so we clean out and sell, or donate, or throw away just to declutter our homes. How much more should we do spiritually?

So far, we have been praying inwardly focusing on ourselves and our relationships. Today, we will begin to focus our prayers moving outwardly and to those around us. We will start by praying for those closest to us in our lives and our homes and that is our families. 

I once had someone speak into my life the importance of consistently praying over my family. I was taught that through consistent prayers regardless of what I see, I am praying prayers that are active and living for my family. This ties back to that consistent relationship with the Word of God. The more we sow into that relationship, the more we understand, and the more we can release the Word into our lives and the lives of others. When we speak His Word, we are releasing His words! In response, the Word of God tells us that even the angels move to respond to the voice of the Word. 

Psalm 103:20 Bless (affectionately, gratefully praise) the Lord, you His angels, you mighty ones who do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His Word.

When we speak the Word, angels are on the move to fulfill it. When we speak the Word, we are choosing to release what God says about the situation other than what we see. Speaking the Word is us releases our faith that we are choosing to believe God what God says. 

As a parent, our hearts for our children from the moment they are born is remarkable. We love them, we hope for them, we protect them, we believe the best even when their lives may take a direction we didn’t expect. If our hearts as a parent is just a portion God lets us feel compared to His heart as Father. Can you imagine the love God has for us? He just, like us, has hope and love for us wanting to protect and believe the very best for our lives. 

Let’s take time today to ask God to show us our family through His eyes and His heart. Asking God to show us how to pray for our spouses, and our children. What would He want us to pray over them? 

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome. 

Romans 11:29 For God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable. He never withdraws them when once they are given and He does not change His mind about those to whom He give His grace or in whom He sends His call. 

Isaiah 55:11 So shall My word be that goes forth out of My mouth; it shall not return to Me voice without producing any effect, useless, but it shall accomplish that which I please and purpose and it shall prosper the thing for which I sent it. 

Prayer Starter: 

God, I lift my family up to you realizing that You have a purpose and plan for their lives. God that you have giftings and callings within them that You won’t take back. God that You won’t change Your mind about them. God, You have a purpose for my family and God, I ask You to help me see how to pray for my family through Your heart. I am choosing to pray and speak Your Word, and Your heart over the lives of my family knowing that in that choice, I am releasing angels that are moving in response to Your word. Also, God releasing Your word means that it will not come back without producing. God show me the words to speak. God, I thank You for Your heart, for Your protection, and Your hope for my family. 

• April Price

Yesterday, we focused on our relationship with the Word of God, today we are going to focus on our relationship with His presence in our daily lives. God wants to be involved in our lives–God has always desired relationship with His creation. God wants us to know Him through the Word and He also wants us to know Him through His presence, through encounters with Him that continually draw us closer into an intimate relationship with Him. 

God wants so much more for our relationship with Him. More than it to be limited to Sunday and Wednesday encounters. God created us for a relationship, to know Him intimately. The first example we see is with Adam and Eve. God created Adam…and God shared creation with Adam.

Genesis 3:19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every wild beast and living creature of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; and whatever Adam called every living creature, that was its name.

In verses, 20-25, we continue to see this relationship between God and Adam and when Adam realizes he needed someone to compliment him..God responds by creating a woman to meet that need. The relationship continued with Adam and Eve. (Genesis 3:8-11) There was a time, a cool of the day time that God would meet with Adam and Eve. In these verses, we see they knew, and could recognize the sound of God walking in the garden. 

Genesis 3:10 He said, I heard the sound of You walking in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. 

What’s interesting here is God knew of the sin; yet He still came walking to meet them just as normal. God’s presence meets us to keep us going, we can let things push Him away and we can choose to hide, but God still wants to be with us.

Adam and Eve were familiar with the sound of God’s presence entering their day. They had a personal experience with a living daily relationship with God. His presence in our lives is so important for us in understanding who He is and fully experiencing God. These everyday encounters change our perspectives and He becomes more and more real to us.

There have been many times in my relationship with God where His presence just showed up. I learned that God can show up even when I am not expecting Him or seeking His presence. Our day can be normal, then God can invade our normal. 

Another moment in my life that changed my view of God happened on April 25, 2011. I was having a normal day and out of nowhere, I felt a strong pull to go and pray. I didn’t understand what for or why but I couldn’t shake this desire to just be with God. I just knew I had to pray. In turn, because it was a “normal day”, I pushed this feeling to the side, thinking I would pray later when it was my time to pray. Within just minutes of pushing that feeling aside, it came back. I didn’t understand a lot then, but I did understand that God was leading me. 

I knew that I had to follow this leading. I went outside my house and began to pray. The wind was picking up and the smell of honeysuckle was all around me. I started to pray for my parents. I began to pray deep prayers asking God to go before them, to protect them, to honor the parents that gave me my childhood. I reminded God of who they were and who they were to me and to Him. I asked God to keep them safe. This deep prayer went on for a while, then as soon as it came it left, and I continued about my “normal day” not knowing what would come only two days later on April 27th, and I would lose both of my parents to the tornado. It would even be a few more days later before I realized the praying moment I had just two days before.

That day, I saw another layer to God and that is that He is the God involved in our lives that He not only holds us but our families and everything connected to our hearts. That day, April 25th, was a normal day for me with God interrupting it because of our relationship I could sense His presence and because of that, I know that God was ahead of April 27th. Because of that day, every spring when I smell honeysuckle, I am reminded of the God who goes before us. We may not know what tomorrow holds, but we can have a relationship with the God who holds tomorrow. 

Prayer Starter: 

I want a relationship with God with not only Your Word but also with Your presence. God interrupt my normal day. Make Your presence known to me. I open my heart, my ears to hear that I will be sensitive and responsive to hearing Your voice, your leading in my life to follow when I understand Your ways, but also God when I don’t understand Your ways. I am choosing to look for You, to become familiar with the sound of You walking in my life. 

• April Price

Yesterday, we began to focus on relationships in our lives shedding buried pain and hurt. Today, staying focused on relationships, let’s evaluate our relationship with the Word.

The Word of God is God’s letter to us. The Word is what God left for us as our inheritance to fully know who He is and His extreme love for us. The Word is God, and we can have an active, living, breathing relationship with it.

John 1:1 In the beginning before all time was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself.

Hebrews 4:12 For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power making it active, operative, energizing, and effective, it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and the immortal spirit, and of joints and marrow of the deepest parts of our nature, exposing, and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart.

So many of us can struggle to develop a consistent relationship with the Word. I know, I was one of those people. It’s easier to just do a devotion, or wait until Sunday to hear, but God intended for us to have a consistent relationship with the Word. He shows us Himself through it; we see who we are through Him; we see our inheritance as a child of God.

When I first began my relationship with the Word, I set aside time to read, but I struggled. First, I struggled just staying awake long enough, then I struggled to understand, and I also struggled because I didn’t see the Word like so many others in my life who saw the Word applicable to their lives. I wanted that, but growing up I saw the Word as a story, and God as a person I would encounter when I got to heaven, so the Word was stories to me.

I began to pray a prayer that I pray today and I haven’t changed that prayer. Before I begin reading the Word, I ask God to show me what I need to see and let me hear what I need to hear that I want to see His Word alive in me. The Word is alive so I choose to breathe in that breath of life from the Word.

As I began praying that prayer, I would keep a notebook nearby to write down anything that I would understand. One day, I was reading about the life of David. During that time, I had taken a break to make a pan of cornbread to go with supper for the night. I go back to reading and began to get so interested in what I was reading and at some point, the oven timer went off and I continued to read and couldn’t find a place to stop, because I didn’t want to stop. For the first time the Word was not a story! I was reading the life of David and was seeing my life through it.

Eventually, I had to stop and go get the cornbread out of the oven. I ran and pulled the cornbread out then got back to reading and writing. As I began to write, it dawned on me that in my hurry to just get the cornbread out so I could get back to reading again, I realized I didn’t use any oven mitts to grab the skillet. I had grabbed with my bare hands. I looked at my hands and not even burned or anything. That day, my life and my relationship with God and His Word changed. The Word became alive to me and I never read the Word with a struggle again.

God wants us to find Him in His Word. There are moments in the finding; He wants to be found.

Jeremiah 29:13-14 Then you will seek Me, inquire for, and require Me as a vital necessity and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you…

Prayer Starter

So far, we have invited God to come in, to reveal, to surface, and to clean our hearts. Over the next few days of prayer, I want us to focus on relationships. Today’s focus is on the relationships we have made with others.

Relationships with Others

In the course of our lives, we make relationships with a lot of people, and sometimes those people are sent for a season in our lives to help us grow or were meant for the other person to help them grow. God develops relationships in our lives, but also we can develop relationships ourselves. And for reasons we may, or may not know–some relationships flicker–sometimes it’s good, other times it’s due to hurt and that is not good. It’s not good for our spirit, because although the relationship is not in our daily lives, it leaves a daily bitter taste in our mouths. We bury the hurt and pain and may even say we forgive, but when we see or hear that person’s name that bitter taste is there. That hurt is something we carry and is something that puts a separation between our hearts and God as well as our relationship with Him. We in turn can unknowingly tie God’s hands from moving in our lives because God is bound to His word.

Matthew 5:23-24 So if when you are offering your gift at the altar you there remember that your brother has any grievance against you, leave your gift at the altar and go. First make peace with your brother, and then come back and present your gift.

God doesn’t want us carrying hurt for any length of time. Forgiveness, true forgiveness truly is for you.

I am reminded of my own personal testimony with this struggle of a time in my life where I had some hurt buried deep because of a broken relationship in my life. If someone would have asked me, I would have said of course, I forgave a long time ago. Although my words may have said forgiveness; my heart held deep hurt that told another story to God. I continued reading my word and praying, but something was different. I knew there was a block. I could feel it, and not all the time, but when it did surface I just stuffed it back down by saying I forgave that a long time ago. Then one day while cleaning the toilet, that hurt and those feelings came back up. This time it wasn’t just the person, or the relationship, but it was all the “things” that had hurt me. All those hurts were just bubbling up and I knew I was in a moment… cleaning the toilet.

I had carried this so long that I had to get it out. I felt there was no time to even move from where I was at and in tears I prayed, “what do I do“? In response, I heard in my spirit to grab the toilet paper. I tore it off and began tearing into smaller pieces and one-by-one as I tore that toilet paper, I spoke the hurts as I felt them and one-by-one I threw into the toilet. When it was done..all that pain lifted. In that moment of tearing toilet paper I released deep buried pain and God took care of it as quick as it was to flush it, the block was gone. The heaviness from the hurt was gone.

That day God showed me a new layer to Himself that no matter where you are at, or what you are doing if you respond to the moment, He is going to meet you where you’re at and work with whatever you have got around you. God is so much bigger than we can imagine. I encourage you when God moments happen, stop where you’re at. If they are truly God moments they will happen at the exact right time for you. Move and respond quickly because the enemy waits to steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10)

Church family, I am excited as we begin this first day “United in Prayer.” As we connect to God in new ways personally, we will become more united in His purpose for His church. Enjoy and let this prayer directive and devotion by April Price point us to a United Prayer.

As we begin the next ten days in prayer and fasting, let us choose to let God in. That seems so simple, but almost always so easily overlooked. We all need time to be “tucked away” with God–to spend time with the Father not asking or necessarily praying for anything, or things, but allowing God to work in our hearts and surface things that need to be dealt with. Those things that we know and those things we do not know about–But bringing to the surface things to be dealt with before moving forward and fully into His purpose and plans. So today, Day 1, take time to decree that the next ten days are His. Ask God to show you what you need to see, and hear, to reveal what needs to be revealed about you and your relationship with the Father. 

Let’s choose to close the door to the outside noise and focus on the inside–our hearts– our relationship with God. 

Matt. 6:6 Jesus tells us to go into our most private room and close the door. 

• Matthew 6:6 NLT “But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.”

To me, this is a time you pick to set aside to be with Him where you can “close the door“. It’s a time where there are the fewest distractions in your day–a time you can truly focus. Find your “most private room,” and spend time tucked away. 

I encourage you to get a notebook–or a way to keep notes. If you think of something, “out of the blue”, a person, a situation, something your dealing or have dealt with–write it down. All will be for a purpose remember we are praying and asking God to bring to the surface. Sometimes we don’t even know all the things we push to the bottom of our hearts over the years, but God has a way of getting it to come up and He can deal with it and clean our hearts.

When we step out to meet God sincerely with our whole heart, He steps out and meets us right where we are. He speaks to us! Be expecting it! 

David found his most private room with God and God would show up. David said in Psalm 5:3, In the morning I prepare a prayer, a sacrifice for You and watch and wait for You to speak to my heart. 

Prayer Starter: 

Father, I come to you today and ask you to help me to find the time and a place to step aside and just be with you without any agenda or wants. I declare over my life that these 10 days will be a time to be with you more than my wants or needs. God show me what I need to see, hear, and understand. Reveal to me what I need to know and what I need to know you greater. Let me see our relationship as it truly is and let me grow in my relationship with you and not just about you. Let me be still in your presence and listen more than I speak.. I am here. I am concentrating and dedicating this time to be with you.