We all know that prayer works. Sometimes we get frustrated with the process of how it works. Sometimes we see immediate results from our prayers and it’s awesome, right? But we all know that whether we see things immediately or we don’t, prayer works.
And so, I was praying about something one day, and you know, we have our circumstances in front of us, and so we pray to God about that. At the moment, I’ve got some pain in my knee. So typically we go, you know what, “God take the pain away from my knee and God, heal my knee, and God, let it be easier for me to walk,” and we can pray from the circumstances in front of us. And the one day the Lord said to me, “Hey, how about praying from my promise instead? How about praying from what will happen when I heal your knee?” Right? And I went, “Lord, that is so cool.”
So I’m not praying from my current circumstance, but I’m praying from the future, I’m praying from the promise. So what happens is when we pray about our current circumstances, we can feel despondent. We can feel the pain of what’s going on. We can feel the frustration of what’s going on or our disappointment, or our lack of hope in the current circumstance. And so we’re literally trying to rev ourselves up from that place, we’re trying to dredge up the faith to be able to believe that our prayers will work.
But actually when we turn it from the other way and we go like, let’s take Jeremiah 29:11 where “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future.” If we took that verse and prayed from that place and go, “You know what Lord? My knee may be sore right now, but you said you’ve got a good future for me. You said that you’d heal me because of what happened with Jesus on the cross, and what He paid for me to have.” Can you feel how you get filled with faith and you get filled with hope, and your shoulders square up and your eyes open and you get super excited about seeing God do what He promised you would do all this time? Ah, it totally changes the perspective of prayer, right?
So whatever circumstance you’re in at the moment, whatever you are praying to the Lord about, whether it’s something for you, whether it’s something for a beloved one, whether it’s something for your city or your state, or your country, or the circumstances you see around you, instead of praying from what’s happening, ask the Lord to give you a truth from His word to pray towards. What are the things that He is doing? What are the things that are happening behind the scenes that will cause what He’s promised to come to pass? And you will see your faith and your hope levels rise like you have never experienced before. Then you get to partner with heaven to see what that looks like on earth. Have fun!