Kingdom Woman: Embracing Your Purpose, Power, and Possibilities (15 page)

Jesus knew that. However, if you do not know your legal relationship, you can’t call upon your legal rights. Some of you may have problems, situations, circumstances, and messes that have gone on for a long time, and you are wondering why God hasn’t come through for you yet. Because the widow knew the law and kept appealing to the judge based on the law, she received what was duly hers. If an unjust judge will submit to the law even though he does not have regard for it, think of how much more a holy and righteous God will grant what is legally yours as His child when you ask Him for it. God is bound to His Word.

Claiming your legal “rights” is not a name-it-and-claim-it approach to life where God is obligated to do whatever you want Him to do. It is, however, taking advantage of all that God says He wants to do for His people based upon what falls within the boundaries of His sovereign will. This is the approach that Moses took when he appealed to God to change His mind and not render
judgment on the Israelites based on what He had promised to do for His people (Numbers 14:11–21).

Neither has God forgotten who He is or what His nature is. But while praying in alignment with His Word, we remind ourselves and pray with the power of covenantal law.

What a kingdom woman does is more than just pray. A kingdom woman knows how to pray legally. If you are like the widow and you have no place to turn, you need to know your standing before God. When you know your “rights,” then you call on God with the authority to get His attention or favor based on your legal status granted by the blood of Jesus Christ and the new covenant. The very best way to pray is to hold up the standard of His own Word.

You open your Bible to places where God has said what He will do for His children, and you pray, “God, You don’t lie and You are faithful. This is what You said, and this is what I’m asking for in Jesus’ name.” Those kind of prayers, based on God’s Word, get answered. “I tell you, He will see that they get justice, and
quickly
” (Luke 18:8).

There are some passages in Scripture that are truly promises, such as “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Then there are general truths that aren’t ironclad promises, “When a man’s ways are pleasing to the
LORD
, he makes even his enemies live at peace with him” (Proverbs 16:7). In either case, pray and ask God for His blessing according to His will for you in Christ Jesus.

In terms of what He has written, God is committed first and foremost to His word, to His covenant. God is not bound to what you think. He is not bound to what others think. He’s not even bound to what you feel. He’s not bound to your parents, your spouse, your boss, your doctor, your friends—or anything. But He is bound to His Word. That is the one thing that He is entirely committed to. If you will learn how to pray to Him according to your covenantal rights, you will see Him open doors you thought were shut, close doors on your opposition, overcome your enemies, defeat your demons, and
bring you swiftly along to your destiny. You will see the King intervene on behalf of His kingdom women who pray kingdom prayers.

Chrystal’s Chronicles

I needed five hundred dollars. After adding up all of my expenses and calculating the income I could bring in, I still needed five hundred dollars.

At the age of nineteen, I was a brand-new, unmarried, single mother in the middle of my sophomore year of college, and I was attempting to figure out how to make the numbers work so I could stay in school. I think I can identify completely with the widow who went to the judge. Vulnerable, at risk, and scared. Yup, that about sums up exactly how I felt.

I had done all I could do in terms of my own figuring. I’d looked for another job, cut expenses, and gone over the numbers more times than I could count. Exhausted in my own strength, I decided that my only option was to pray for a miracle.

Rights? Did I even have any rights? Did God’s covenant extend to me in my situation? Could I call out to Him based on His Word and expect Him to answer me? I figured it couldn’t hurt to try, so that’s what I decided to try to do.

I cracked open my Bible and did what so many of us do when we need to hear a serious word from the Lord—I let the Book fall open and hoped that the word I needed to hear was on that page.

No such luck.

But I did start reading. I read on simply because I so badly wanted to hear from Him, and I was desperate to persist until I got what I needed. Eventually, I read right into the passage covering the story of David and Goliath, and I sensed that story was the one for me to stake my prayer request on.

Even after hearing that story over and over as child, I must have read it five times on this particular day. I was searching for the message in the story—my message from God. Honestly, the more I read it, the more confused I was! What was my giant? Was my giant to conquer staying in school and have faith in God’s provision and His strength to finish? Or was the giant to trust God, yield to the change in my life, head home, and start fresh?

It was probably the middle of the night when I finally got up from the kitchen
table and went to bed. I had read the passage over and over, prayed over and over, journaled my heart whispers on the matter—and still no clear answer.

Exhausted, I retired with empty hands.

It was only five hundred dollars. Many years later, I can look back on that one evening of my life and be amazed at how monstrous that five-hundred-dollar deficit seemed to me. If staying in college was my giant, then that dollar amount was my sword to slay it with. And I didn’t have the weapon in my possession.

As the time grew closer for me to finalize my decision to return to school or stay in my hometown, I continued to ask God for the additional five hundred dollars needed to conquer the giant in front of me. I believed with my mind that the God who owned “the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10) could find a way to sell a couple of those cattle on my behalf. I had rehearsed many times my belief that “my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). So like Gideon laying out his fleece, I laid out my desires before the Lord and waited for Him to answer definitively.

He answered.

At the last minute, the mail arrived with a letter addressed to me from someone I’d never met. I opened the letter and out fell a check for five hundred dollars.

No kidding. For real. Exactly five hundred dollars.

And true to form, God’s blessing didn’t stop there. He continued to bless me “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20,
KJV
). In fact, this initial monetary gift was the first gift of many that God would send me through a precious family throughout my time in college until I graduated.

Now you are probably assuming that with an answer to a prayer of this nature, I went on to become a tried and true prayer warrior. I’m ashamed to say this is not the case. I will be honest and admit that prayer is still one of the hardest spiritual disciplines for me. While I obviously believe in the power of prayer, I still have the tendency to spend a lot of energy attempting to exert my own power in a situation before it dawns on me to access the power of God through prayer.

The world in which we live encourages us to be all, have it all, and do it all. We are told as modern women that we can be the solution and the end-all to any situation we face. We are pushed to pride ourselves in our power, make the most of our minds, and act on all opportunities that come our way. We are a product of the do-it-yourself generation, the “Just Do It” culture, and the getting-things-done philosophy. Today’s woman is supposedly self-reliant, self-sufficient, and ultimately self-serving.

But the longer I live, the more God graciously nudges me in His direction, encouraging me to lay my concerns at His feet. The longer I live, the more opportunities I have to see clearly my need for the Lord’s sovereign guidance and intervention. The longer I live, the greater my view of my own weaknesses and imperfections. The longer I live, the more time I have to learn that control is only an illusion and that God is the only sure source of security, solace, and surety. The longer I live, the more I come to understand that, like the widow, all I’ve got is God, and prayer is one of the ways I demonstrate my dependence on Him.

While crisis praying has its place, only a shallow relationship with the Father has that kind of prayer as its mainstay. I have engaged in my own fair share of emergency prayers and been blessed to know that God does answer in His sovereignty. However, I am learning as the years go by that it is my breath prayers that offer the sweetest return. Those prayers offered up to my Savior the same as I would share them with a friend are effortless and not stressful, and I am especially delighted when He answers! There is nothing better than the Father giving me a desire of the heart just because He can and because He hears me when I share my soul with Him.

Prayer is a conversation, an attitude, a lifestyle. It can take different forms—verbal or written, quiet or loud, kneeling or standing. It is the act of taking ongoing opportunities to display my trust in the ability of the Savior to hear, understand, and deliver. Purposeful vertical communication is the act of operating in faith that the God I say I believe in is present and fully active in my life. Prayer allows me to talk to my Friend.

This exchange becomes more fluid the more I understand Him, and I understand Him more as I purposefully get to know Him by reading the letter He wrote to me. It is in this interchange—me talking to Him with my mouth, my mind, or my heart, and Him talking to me through His Word, His Spirit, or that still small voice—that I can operate in complete confidence that His promises do indeed extend to me and that I can depend on Him.

Prayer is not just for emergencies or when we need a breakthrough. Prayer is the everyday miracle where the God of the universe chooses to talk with us. And in this nearly inconceivable phenomenon, we find we can “approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

Pray because you can. Pray because you should. Pray because the God you believe in is delighted, each day, to have a conversation with you.

The Conversation

The Christian life without prayer is like driving a car with an almost-empty gas tank. You drive on fumes, hoping to make it to your destination before your car sputters and dies. Similarly, many of us try to live without prayer because we think we can get away with it—that is, until we wind up broken down on the side of the road.

The reality is that many of us struggle with prayer. We read the story of the widow and the unjust judge and see how Christ states clearly that God will hear and answer our prayers. Yet we still neglect this crucial area of life. I guess it’s hard to talk to someone you can’t see and who doesn’t answer back in an audible voice. It’s hard to have faith.

We often view prayer like the national anthem sung before a baseball game: It gets the game started, but it doesn’t really have much to do with what’s happening on the field. We pray when we start our day, or we’ll pray here and there, but it doesn’t have a large role in our daily lives.

We aren’t the only believers to struggle with prayer. Jesus’ disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray because they didn’t know. They asked some of the same questions we do: How do we, as physical beings, communicate with the invisible God? In fact, why do we have to do it at all?

Jesus answered their questions in Matthew 6—7. Jesus introduced how we
should pray as well as how we should not pray. The precautions He listed are things to watch out for, because they will ruin our prayer lives. In fact, Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer as a pattern or model for reverent, effective communication with God.

Pray Regularly

The first thing Jesus wants you to know is that you must pray regularly. It is expected that if you are a follower of Jesus Christ—not merely a Christian but a disciple—prayer will be a regular part of your life.

Prayer
is defined as “a believer’s communication with God through the person of Christ and assisted by the work of the Holy Spirit.” At the core of prayer is relational communication with God. There is a difference between talking and communication. When you pray, you are not talking to yourself but to a holy God. He must be on your mind, the focus of your attention and the object of your communication.

Prayer is made possible through Christ alone; the only reason we can get to God is because the blood of Christ opened a door for us. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). He is the access point. We cannot enter into the presence of a holy God as sinful people. Access must be provided through the Son. That’s why we pray in Jesus’ name. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 10:19–22 that we have access by the blood of Christ. His death satisfied the demands of a holy God. Hebrews 4:16 says that we may come boldly to the throne of grace and enter into His presence. We can walk right up to His throne. Confidently, we can say, “Here I am, Lord. Jesus Christ let me in.”