On Monday January 8, 2023, the Michigan Wolverines won the championship. It was an exciting game and fun to celebrate with a house full of diehard Wolverine fans, and with the team, who hadn’t won a championship for close to 30 years. What an honor! They were undefeated 15-0! WOW!
While watching the game, of course, we heard the words offense and defense over and over, and now for the last few days, those words still keep ringing in my spirit.
It reminds me of a time that the Lord taught me how to pray effectively so that I too would celebrate being a winner; undefeated by the power of Christ.
You see, I was a beggar in my prayers, for many years. Most of the time, my prayers sounded something like this, “Dear God, please don’t leave me!” Or when praying for my children, “God, please don’t leave them!”
Then one, day the Lord spoke to my spirit, and said, “Angela I’m unable to answer prayers that do not align with my Word, but if you speak MY words, they don’t return to me void.”
Suddenly I remembered a powerful scripture. Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
I realized that according to the Word, God would never leave me or forsake me. And furthermore, he wasn’t planning to leave or forsake my children anytime soon either.
By my begging, “God, please don’t leave me or them.” I was speaking language that He couldn’t relate to. He is undefeated and the Word of God says so.
He then spoke to my spirit and said, “You would get a lot further with me if you prayed offensively rather than defensively.”
And that my friend, was when I became a lover of His Word!
From there on, He taught me to find the juiciest scriptures that I could find for my situations at hand. And instead of begging, He taught me to thank Him for what He already promised.
My prayers soon sounded powerful instead of pitiful, because they sounded something like this, “Thank you Lord that you have not left my children. Because you have said in your Word that you will never leave or forsake them, I have assurance and peace that you have them covered. I’m so grateful for that!”
That’s the words of a champion!
He immediately comes close when you begin to thank Him. He loves to be thanked! And He especially leans in to listen when His very own words are coming back to Him. I can just hear Him say, “Thata girl! You sound just like me now! You are Bone of my Bone and Flesh of my Flesh! You have the voice of a champion! Undefeated! THAT gets my excitement and full attention!”
The Word says in Isaiah 55:11 It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.
So the next time friend, that you pray the same prayer again… the one that you’ve prayed 1,000 times, think on how you can align it with the Word and begin thanking Him for what He’s already promised.