“Two inches and a storm!” Dad held up two work worn fingers as he  prayed. He wanted a storm so that the rain came down fast enough to run off and fill his new dam.

I don’t remember how long it took, maybe a few days or a week.  The sky turned green. It stormed.  The door ripped off the shed, an enormous tree that should have fallen on the house, fell the other way and left a metre deep crater.   There were so many trees down that Dad couldn’t even drive up the driveway when he got home from fixing everyone else’s electricity.  That storm had ripped powerpoles and trees out all over our shire.

 

When the deluge had finished, you could hear the water rushing into that new dam.  It was filled.

And the rain gauge measured 2 inches.

Be careful what you pray.

Then once upon a time I was 14 and watching Joyce Meyer share how her husband, Dave, had prayed for difficult wife to love into wholeness.

I’d just come back from my life changing trip to Papua New Guinea where I met the Holy Spirit, and I wanted to change the world. And everyone said you needed to grow up.

And I thought that in order to grow up fast I should pray for a difficult situation to help me grow.

In combination with that I prayed for a friend.

And a girl a bit older than me showed up our next homeschool day.

Then her older brother showed up the next time.

Whether it was the fact that I was 14 and he was 23, or a combination of the events going on at the time; it was a situation that made me grow.

 

And between us we had about 14 prayer ministry sessions with Victorious Ministry Through Christ (an international prayer ministry) before we got married; each session lasting 6 hours.    Those are some of the best tools we’ve carried into marriage.  Whenever people ask what they should do before marriage I recommend VMTC.

We grew. And we carry those tools in our spiritual toolbox; use them every day.

 

Then there was that time, newly married and I started praying for all the families in our street without really praying protection for us first.  The spiritual warfare got turned up a notch and suddenly our place was getting broken into and the motorbike stolen.

It made us start praying God’s protection over our lives, possessions and relationship, and now we do everyday.  We even prayed that motorbike back . . .

Within a year of being married we moved interstate to become youth pastors at the husband’s Aunt and Uncle’s church, and I prayed for some difficult kids to love on.

That Sunday School we got put in charge of was made up of some pretty wild foster kids, who bit and kicked, swore and barked like dogs.  Some days we went home in tears.

We saw answered prayers, and we saw different ones come and go.

And there was such a shaking of my faith at that time, and mainly the reason I kept in the WORD was because of preparing Sunday School lessons week after week, even using this prayer quilt prepared by Robyn Small.

 

So simple yet profound, answering questions I didn’t know I had, and building a good foundation for me and the children I taught it to.

• Rediscovering the relationship aspect to prayer and building your life on trust.
• The prayer helper we all need to meet
• Expecting supernatural answers to prayer.
• Looking at how God provides through prayer
• When prayer is instant and when it’s not
• Why God doesn’t answer prayers
• What is intercession and it’s important
• The difference between praying out of faith v fear
• How to be persistent in prayer and the importance of unity

And at the same time we were doing a Bible Study exploring prayers in the New Testament that Paul wrote for us to pray over ourselves.  I’ve pulled together 6 of these profound and powerful prayers for personal growth, and made them a little bit pretty to print out and stick somewhere you can see them everyday.

When we began praying the very Word of God over our lives it won’t return void, and there is stuff in these prayers I’d never think to ask for myself.  I’m inviting you to sign up for our 6 week prayer challenge.