Day 40 of 40 Days of Prayer and Blessing

This is the 40th day!   Women have fasted and prayed in London, New York, Virginia, Georgia, Texas, Colorado, and California - prayers of blessing for hundreds of men all over the world!  As we have prayed in agreement, speaking the powerful, transforming Word of God, incredible and miraculous things have been set in motion.  Be expectant!   

Expect to be amazed!  

I call it a God-incidence that today the email I received from Nicky Gumbel, the pastor of Holy Trinity Brompton London, the church attended by the women who initiated these 40 Days of Prayer and Blessing, is about marriage!   You can see the post in its entirety here:  The Bible in One Year

but I share a few snippets with you, following the prayer points for today.  

My prayer for you is that you are encouraged!  Take Courage! Let Hope arise in your heart, mind, soul and spirit.  

Day 40 (21^st of February)

Prayer for your 10+ men (Psalm 91) 

• Command Your angels concerning them
• Guard them in all their ways
• Answer them in times of trouble
• Satisfy them with long life and be show them salvation

Prayer for yourself:    

To those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ:  Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance

Two Are Better Than One  (Nicky Gumbel)

I have never been very good at using visual aids.  I am not a very practical person.  On the other hand, my great friend, Nicky Lee (who, together with his wife Sila, has pioneered The Marriage Course and other Family Life courses) is extremely practical and often uses visual aids. 

 When he is speaking at weddings he sometimes uses a visual aid to illustrate the passage in Ecclesiastes 4.  The writer says, ‘Two are better than one … A cord of three strands is not quickly broken’ (vv.9,12).

As a picture or marriage, Nicky Lee takes two strands of different coloured wool and weaves them together.  Together they are stronger and yet they can quite easily be broken.  Then he takes a third strand of nearly invisible gut.  With this third strand it is almost impossible to break the two pieces of wool.  (I did try to use this illustration once, but for reasons I cannot remember it went horribly wrong!

 The point that he makes so well, and that comes out of the passage in Ecclesiastes, is that whilst friendships and marriages are wonderful gifts, having Jesus at the centre of a friendship or marriage provides an invisible thread of enormous strength. 

1.  Honour marriage: two become one
Proverbs 5:15-23
This is a beautiful description of marriage in which two people ‘become one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24).  Part of its beauty lies in its exclusiveness.  Each person has their own ‘cistern’, their own ‘well’, their own ‘springs’ (Proverbs 5:15–16).  They are ‘yours alone, never to be shared with strangers’ (v.17). 

It is such a wonderful picture of marriage as a source of blessing (‘blessed’, v.18a), rejoicing (‘rejoice’, v.18b), love (‘a loving doe’, v.19a), grace (‘a graceful deer’, v.19a), satisfaction (‘satisfy you always’, v.19b) and romance (‘may you ever be captivated by her love’, v.19c, NIV). 

The greatness of real love (‘enduring intimacies’, v.19, MSG) – the emotional and physical love between a husband and wife – is compared to the ‘cheap thrills’ of ‘dalliance with a promiscuous stranger’ (v.20, MSG).

That is why the writer warns so strongly against adultery.  Be aware, he says, that God is watching (v.21).  And the path that leads to adultery is ‘evil’, ‘wicked’, sinful, foolish and it leads to death (vv.22–23).  We see an example of this in the New Testament passage where it was Herod’s adultery that led to him murdering John the Baptist (Mark 6:14–29). 

Whilst the fact that our ‘ways are in full view of the Lord’ (v.21) is a warning against adultery, it is also a reminder of the strength that comes from having ‘the Lord’ involved in a marriage, as the third strand of the cord.

Indeed, in response to God’s love for us, it is discovering and living out our love for God which is the central guiding principle in how we are to love our spouse in marriage.  God’s love for us is the best example of how we should love our spouse.

Thank you Lord for the huge blessing of marriage.  Thank you for the difference that the third strand, of the presence of Jesus, makes to a marriage.  Thank you that two is better than one and that a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. 

Lord, thank you so much for our own marriages and those we see happening around us in the community of the church.  Lord, I pray for Nicky and Sila Lee and The Marriage Preparation Course and The Marriage Course.  I pray too for all those who are working to strengthen marriage in this country and elsewhere.

AMEN!  [so be it!]”  

Expecting to be amazed ~

Barbara

© Barbara Nelson – 2012

Protect & Strengthen - 40 Days of Prayer and Blessing

Day 39 – (20^th of February)

Prayer for your 10+ men (Psalm 86) 

• Teach them Your way, O Lord, that they may walk and live in Your truth; direct and unite their hearts [solely, reverently] to fear and honor Your name.
• Protect them from those who come against them
• Show them that you are compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness
• O turn to them and have mercy and be gracious to them; grant strength (might and inflexibility to temptation) to Your servants and save your sons! 

Prayer for yourself:

Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son, will be with us in truth and love.

Restored JOY! 40 Days of Prayer and Blessing

May your Joy be restored today.....  

Day 38 – (19^th of February)

Prayer for your 10+ men (Psalm 51:12-17) 

• Restore to them the JOY of Your salvation, and grant them a willing spirit to sustain them  
• Open their lips, that their mouth may declare Your praise
• Help them have a broken spirit and a contrite heart
• In Your good pleasure make them prosper!

Prayer for yourself:

We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true—even in his Son Jesus Christ. 

The Rock - 40 Days of Prayer and Blessing

The ROCK!

Yesterday I heard from a male friend who shared with me that he had feelings of shame because of a financial issue.  Shame is more common than we realize for the men going through career and relationship transitions.   It is a heaviness that pulls us into a pit of discouragement, BUT GOD hears and answers our prayers!  The Psalms we are praying for the men, today and yesterday, are prayers that God will pull them out of those dark places of shame, and set their feet upon the Rock, which is solid, firm, and unmovable.  (I added to the prayer points today.)   

Day 37 – (18^th of February)

Prayer for your 10+ men (Psalm 71 - Amplified) 

• In You, O Lord, the men put their trust and confidently take refuge
• Let them never be put to shame or confusion
• Deliver them in Your righteousness and cause them to escape
• Bow down Your ear to them and hear them and save them!
• Be to them a ROCK of refuge in which to dwell, and a sheltering stronghold to which they may continually resort which You have appointed to save them
• For You are their ROCK and their Fortress
• For You [God] be their HOPE; O Lord God, be their trust... and be the source of their confidence.  
• Teach them, that they may declare your marvellous deeds
• Even when they are old and grey, do not forsake them, that they may declare your power to the next generation

Prayer for yourself:

For everyone born of God overcomes the world!  (1 John 5:4)

AMEN!  [so be it!]”  

Expecting to be amazed ~

Barbara

© Barbara Nelson – 2012

Establish our Steps - 40 Days of Prayer and Blessing

God bless you as you pray for the men in your life!  

Day 36 – (17^th of February)

Prayer for your 10+ men (Psalm 40) 

(I added a few)

• As they wait patiently, You hear their cry
• Bring them up out of the pit, and out of the miry clay, and set their feet upon a rock
• Establish their steps
• Put a new song in their mouths, “Praise to our God!”
• Open their lips that they would proclaim Your righteousness in the great assembly
• Do not withhold Your mercy from them
• May Your love and truth always protect them
• Save them from their troubles and from their sins
• Put to shame and confusion all who seek their lives

Prayer for yourself:

This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

He WILL give you the desires of your heart! 40 Days of Prayer and Blessing

My sister Lisa often has great nuggets of wisdom to share with me, as she did last Friday before her only son’s wedding.  We were talking about trusting God and His perfect plan, even when it does not make sense.  It is difficult to dispute the wisdom that was spoken first by the inspired King David:

“Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.”  

Later that day I read an email that contained a message titled, “Desires and Dreams of the Heart”, and I have learned to pay attention when I hear the same verse from two very different sources, 2 or more times in a day or week.  I share a snippet with you here:  

When we were made one with God, through Jesus Christ, the very desires of our heart had the potential to reflect the same desires that reside in God's heart. This is possible because the Holy Spirit – God – lives within us.   

Psalm 37:4 says, "Take delight in the LORD, and He will give you your heart's desires." 

Psalm 37:4 says that once our focus is on the Lord – delighting in Him – then our heart is in a place to actually desire the same things God desires. We must "take" our delight and deposit it in God. If our delight is placed elsewhere, then our desires will be birthed from the limitations of our own self-provision or from a kingdom that stands in direct opposition to God. In the end, we will begin to worry like an unbeliever because we have disconnected ourselves from a place of trust.

Day 35 – (16^th of February) Prayer Points from London:

Prayer for your 10+ men (Psalm 37) 

• Hope in the Lord and therefore inherit the land
• In times of disaster, not wither, in days of famine, enjoy plenty
• Be upheld by the Lord’s hand
• Have the law of their God on their heart and their feet not slip

Prayer for yourself:

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome [the spirits of this world], because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

Additional Prayer points from Psalm 37 for your 10+ men:  

Father God, we pray for the men in our community, and for all men called to Kingdom marriages.  We declare over their spirits, that they will.....

• Trust in the LORD, and do good;
• Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness
• Delight yourself in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart!
• Commit you way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass....   He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday.  
• Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him
• Do not Fret - it only causes harm (This is stated three times!)
• Cease from anger, and forsake wrath
• Wait on the LORD, and keep His way, and He shall exalt you to inherit the land.

AMEN!  [so be it!]”  

Expecting to be amazed ~

Barbara

© Barbara Nelson – 2012

Home Stretch - 40 Days of Prayer and Blessing

This is the home stretch for those of who have been praying 40 Days of Prayer and Blessing.  Last night I was reminded of the movie Secretariat, and woke up this morning thinking about these remaining days of our prayer assignment - this is not the time to slack off.  So, at the beginning of our last 7 days, a dose of Secretariat gumption is in order for ourselves, and for all of us called to Kingdom marriages.  

 “It (he) paws fiercely, rejoicing in its strength,    and charges into the fray.  It (WE) laughs at fear, afraid of nothing;    it does not shy away from the sword.” (Job 39:21-22) 

“You are about to see something, that you’ve never seen before!”  

“This is not about going back.  This is about life being ahead of you and you run at it!  Because you never know how far you can run unless you run.”  Penny Chenery (Tweedy)

Pray and believe that we are all going to see something, (or someone) that we have never seen before!  Pray that the men will be infused with renewed strength to run into their destinies.  

Day 34 – (15^th of February)

Prayer for your 10+ men (1Peter 2:11-17) 

• Would live such good lives among the Gentiles, that people would see their good deeds and glorify God
• Show proper respect to everyone
• Love the brotherhood of believers

Prayer for yourself:

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see Him as He is.  (1 John 3:2)

AMEN!  [so be it!]”  

Expecting to be amazed ~

Barbara

© Barbara Nelson – 2012