SoCCO Prayer-Connect

“The devil smiles when we make plans. He laughs when we get too busy. But he trembles when we pray and especially when we pray together.” Corrie Ten Boom

Why is it that failure destroys some, while others thrive and become stronger through it? The secret is that they make a tutor out of their failure and turn their greatest defeats into learning experiences. You can be much more fruitful if only you had a little help. Prayers on this page have been put together to provide some of that help. 

It is time for you to get your eyes out of the rearview mirror of life into the past and start looking through the windshield ahead into the great and better future that awaits you. What lies within you is greater than what lies around you and before you. What lies ahead of you is greater than what you have been through. 

The fight the devil is giving you is because he detests the unveiling of what he sees in your future. It is time for you to begin to celebrate the fact that you have survived till now. If you have made it up till now, you will make it to the end. The devil tried to destroy you before now, but the good news is that he failed. Despite all you have been through, you’re a walking, talking, breathing trophy of God’s grace and victory. You are still standing and will keep standing as you begin to do those things, which those who stood before you did. Stand on God’s promises, take off your grave clothes, sell the coffin and dare to live again. Remember today is another opportunity at living. Because He lives, you will live also. He is the source of your life. 

Praying must be done because God wants it done. He commands it to be done. Man needs it, and man must do it. Prayer is God’s business, to which men can and should attend. The greatest teaching and exercise you need to involve yourself in is to pray. While most schools may not be for all, the school of prayer is for all. One will never seek in vain that seeks Him aright. If we are citizens of God’s kingdom, we must pray. 

The Christian who relegates prayer to a subordinate place in his life soon loses whatever spiritual zeal he may have once possessed. The church that makes little of prayer cannot maintain vital piety and is powerless to advance the gospel. The gospel cannot live high or conquer without prayer. The disciples looked at Jesus, His ministry, His power, His splendour, the miracles, the success, the inability of the devil to succeed over Him, considered, understood and knew that the secret of His life and under-girding strength was prayer. So they said to Him, “Lord teach us to pray.” 

We must confess what God’s word says about us in prayer, for by this we deeply touch Him. There is no sweeter sound to the Father than the voice of the child saying back to Him what He has said in his word. John Welch resolved, “I ought not to omit any of the parts of prayer which include confession... There is a fearful tendency to omit confession…This must be resisted.” 

In our confession of God’s word, we are indicating our readiness to possess the things God has already given by the word of promise. By our confession, we are serving a notice to Satan that he cannot put on us anything contrary to what God’s word says because our confession says we have agreed with God. Our confession is a testimony to the truth of what God says against the facts of the case and that we are expecting only what God’s word says. 

It is the reality of what the word of God says that we seek in prayer. Prayer is the soul getting into contact with the God in whom it believes. Prayer betters men, and the world is bettered by praying. Prayer secures God’s greatest glory and man’s greatest goal. 

He knows not God who knows not how to pray. Neither has he seen God, whose eye has not sought for God in the closet. Prayer usually precedes fruit-bearing. The closet has much to do with making the character, and the character has something to do with making the closet. Does prayer change things? No! Prayer changes people, and then such changed people change things. 

“He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.” (Deuteronomy 10:18)

PRAYER POINTS

• Pray and ask God to protect you as an orphan/widow or widower according to the promise of His word.
• Pray that the Lord will supply your every need as He has declared Himself responsible for you.
• Pray that those from whom favour is due would not withhold it from you, as the Lord has commanded it for you.
• Pray that the Lord will deliver you from the hand of the enemy and that he will defend your soul against attacks.
• Pray that you will experience the hand of God as your defender, protector and provider all the days that you shall live.

“This is what the LORD says — your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.”
(Isaiah 44:24)

PRAYER POINTS

• Pray that the Lord will redeem you from every struggle you face as a single parent. Pray and ask God to empower you to bring up your children in the way of the Lord.
• Pray that He who formed your children in your womb (or your partner’s womb) will care for them.
• Pray that the God of all comfort will strengthen you to deal with issues that you are forced to face all by yourself.
• Pray that the God who upholds all things by the Word of His power would uphold you in your duties and function as a parent.
• Pray that the possessor of the heavens and the earth, who holds the balance of your days, will make your years ahead the best ones you ever lived.

“But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.” (Malachi 4:1)

PRAYER POINTS

• Pray and decree God’s mercy that this sickness will not lead unto death and that God’s name will be glorified through it.
• Pray and ask God to arise, with healing in His wings and set you free from the bondage of sickness (mention the name), so that you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall and trample down every sickness under the sole of your feet.
• Pray and decree that whatsoever things have been written against the joy of having good health, be wiped clean.
• Pray and decree that healing and restoration shall come back to you and ask for abundant peace and security.
• Pray and decree that henceforth, no sickness forged against you shall prosper and ask for your healing to be whole and permanent.

“…And provide for those who grieve in Zion — to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of His splendor.” (Isaiah 61:3)

PRAYER POINTS

• Pray a prayer of forgiveness over those who have hurt you.
• Pray to God to take the offence or the burning issue out of your mind.
• Pray that such an affliction will not rise a second time in your life.
• Pray and ask God to bestow on you a crown of beauty instead of ashes.
• Pray and ask God to bestow on you the oil of gladness instead of mourning and to clothe you with a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

“His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was 12 years old, they went up to Jerusalem…when they had finished the days, as they returned, the boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem and Joseph and his mother did not know it, but supposing him to have been in the company they went a day’s journey.” (Luke 2:41-44)

PRAYER POINTS

• Pray that you will know the Lord in truth and recognize his presence around you.
• Pray that in doing the things of God, that you will not lose focus in your relationship with him.
• Pray that your pursuit of the things of God should be a direct result of your pursuit of God Himself.
• Pray that the presence of the Lord would remain with you permanently according to His promise.
• Pray that you will know and recognise immediately, if for any reason the presence of the Lord is not around you.

“Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” (1 Timothy 6:18-19)

PRAYER POINTS

• Pray that you will live your life with a meaning and a purpose.
• Pray that the Lord will help you break any negative pattern in your family and in your environment.
• Pray that the Lord will reveal to you, your destiny and your place in this generation.
• Pray that your life will be a demonstration of the working power of the Holy Spirit.
• Pray that after you have lived and gone, that your life would live on as a legacy for generations after you.

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them.” (Ecclesiastes 12:1)

PRAYER POINTS

• Pray that the Lord will enable you to know Him in the days of your strength.
• Pray that your strength will not be used up in pursuit of physical and unprofitable pleasures.
• Pray and ask God to help you to recognize and understand every step of the way that you are not your own but the Lord’s.
• Pray that in the days of reflection when your strength is gone, that you will not have anything to regret.
• Pray that the Lord will give you the strength to reject peer pressure and pressures from the society you live in.

On a Sunday morning some years ago, when I was a baby Christian, my friend invited me to her Church where prayer dominated most of their services. I still remember vividly what the minister preached about. He said that God has given us the power to walk over serpents and scorpions and that nothing will harm us. As I was not fully grown in the Lord then, I decided to ask a sister after the service what the minister meant about ‘walking over serpents and scorpions.’ After sharing some of her life experiences, the sister quoted Luke 10:19 to me, saying, “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” I marvelled at this! I was reassured that if I believed in God’s word, it would be so. 

Afterwards, I continued to ponder over these words for a couple of days. I also began to confess it in the morning after waking up and in the evening before going to bed to the extent that it soon became part of me. It was 8.00 pm, the following Thursday evening. My mother had gone to her friend’s house and left my baby sister and me in her superstore while I attended to customers. As it was very quiet, I decided to go out of the shop with my baby sister on my back and was watching what was happening on the streets. 

After a few minutes, I found myself rubbing my right leg onto my left leg as I felt an ant was probably crawling around my legs. It stopped and then again I felt the crawling, but the moment I rubbed my legs unto each other, the perpetrator would stop. I did not look back to check what it could have been and neither did I realise how deadly the perpetrator could be. Eventually, when the crawling did not stop, I abruptly turned back, and behold, it was a snake! An average-sized snake! It was unbelievable. This incident did not happen in a village neither were there bushes nearby. No! Where did it come from? I did not know. Did it bite me? No, as God did not permit it. The snake had been licking and having a play around my legs! 

What I was staring at on the streets held my attention to such an extent that nothing would have convinced me earlier that a snake would be playing around my legs up to my knee area. How was I spared from being bitten by the snake? Well, I believe so much that God had saved me through His saving power, grace and His words. It then dawned on me why I took so much interest in asking about Luke 10:19 when I attended the Church Service earlier that Sunday. Little did I know that God was directing me to the weapon of my warfare. Since that day, I realised that relentlessly reading the Word of God and praying always are very essential antidotes in one’s life.  What I want you to take from this story of what truly happened to me is that amid trouble, people need reassurance that God is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). If God has ever saved one person before, He will save another. Ask. To read more, order this book on Amazon – Ask Volume 1.