Do you have your “war” strategy in place?
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There is a battle going on not only in our world, but in the hearts and lives of every person. Not one of us can say that we do not have battles we are fighting. We all do. And that is why it is so very important that we take God at His word and humble ourselves, to seek His face, and pray.
The theme of my blog over the years has been to live intentionally, and today I want to talk about an area that many of us neglect — being intentional about prayer. It all started with a movie…War Room.
Watch War Room
My oldest daughter was able to go and see War Room when it was in theaters, but the rest of our family hadn’t seen it yet until this past Sunday. Our church decided to show War Room on Sunday night, Valentine’s Day, so our whole family went and watched it together.
I find it hard to even put into words how this movie moved me. It made me realize how very powerful prayer is and how I needed to make it more of a priority in my own life.
So the first thing I want you to do is to watch War Room. This movie will give a real life example of the power of prayer and will set the tone for helping you get your own “war” strategy in place.
Decide on a plan
Before you begin, you need to decide on a plan for writing out your prayers and Bible verses. Below I will share ideas to get you started. In the movie a closet was converted into a prayer room or “war” room. Not every one has this option so I want to give you some other ideas as well.
- Convert a closet into a war room – If you do have a spare closet you can use, this is a neat option that will give you a special place to pray.
- Use a small bulletin board – If you don’t have a closet to use, one idea is to buy a small bulletin board and pin up your prayers and verses on that board. It can be slid behind a couch or behind something when you aren’t using it.
- Use a prayer journal – This is the option I decided to go with, at least for now. I printed out some half-sized lined sheets and made them into a little booklet that will fit into my travel-size notebook. I designated a full page (front and back) to each person. For now I plan on writing out prayers and copying verses that I want to pray over that person. If I run out of room, then I will just add more pages to my journal!
- Use a piece of poster board – Another option if money is tight is to use a big piece of poster board to tape your prayers and verses on. Like the bulletin board, this can be slid behind something when you are not using it.
Seek the Lord
Spend some time seeking the Lord and asking him to search your heart. Ask God to show you the battles you’ve been fighting. We all have battles we are fighting — some more serious than others. And if we don’t have personal battles we are fighting, we have a battle raging in our own country that we need to engage in. We have a battle for Truth, a battle for what’s right, a battle against Satan.
But before you can engage in the battle, you have to be very aware of the battles you are fighting. It is so tempting to do battle on our own – to think we have to do this all by ourselves. But what God wants is for us to surrender all those battles to Him!
Surrender
Surrender it all to Jesus. Give up total control and allow Him to fight for you. We don’t have the strength in and of ourselves to fight these battles. We must surrender control to Jesus, give it up to Him, and do whatever He is calling us to do.
Besides the obvious thing of praying, the Lord may ask you to do some hard things — to treat someone with kindness when all you want to do is lash out in anger, to hug that difficult child when all you want to do is send them off to their room.
Surrender is not only the giving over of our battles to Jesus, but the giving of our very lives to His service.
Pray
Now that you have determined the battles you are fighting, and you have surrendered it all over to the Lord, now it is time to pray!
Using whatever method above that works best for you, begin writing out prayers that address the battles you are facing. Go to your Bible and copy down verses that you need to be reminded of that encourage you and give you hope.
Then set aside time each day to PRAY! Get alone with God and use the prayers and verses you have written down to pray. Read them silently or out loud. But make this time a time of communion with God, a time to step up to the battle in a big way.
Don’t make a show of this in front of your family or friends, but go about your “war” strategy with intention and purpose…in quietness and rest is your strength.
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We are in a war each and every day. Do you have your war strategy in place?
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