Photo Credit criswatk Sxc.hu
I had become steeped in something that could only bring bondage.
I sat alone on my living room floor, tarot cards laid out before me on the carpet. It was then I heard a whisper… “Turn on the TV.”
Looking around, but not seeing anyone, I reached over and pushed the power button. A woman showed up on the screen and her words stopped me cold, “Tarot cards and Ouija boards will steal your soul.”
I sat, mesmerized by this program and what the woman was saying.
I gathered those tarot cards and took them outside to the trash. It was time to go to church. That was nearly twenty years ago, and I have never looked back.
Sometime later, I sat with a prayer pastor in my home, telling her my story. She sat on the couch next to me, listening intently. When I finished she exclaimed, “Someone was praying for you!”
She explained that God works by people’s prayers.
Throughout the years since, I have learned and experienced the power of prayer many times over. We can pray for our loved ones, and through our prayers we can have a direct impact on their lives. Following are three ways I have prayed for the people in my life.
Pray for God to reveal Himself to them. We had a man over for dinner once, who was a new believer. All he wanted to do, and seemed to find pleasure in, was debate whether the word of God was absolutely true. I began to enter in and tell him what I had learned and experienced in my life. He appreciated my experiences, but it became clear that he really needed to see God for himself. We in our own selves cannot convince anyone. But through the Holy Spirit, God can reveal Himself even to the most hardened skeptic.
Pray that they would come into alignment with God’s plan for their lives (Jeremiah 29:11). A friend I made in church invited me to hear a special speaker. At the end of the service he prayed for people. When he came to me, he prayed a wonderful prayer and ended it with, “Choose life. Choose life.”
I wondered what he meant for a long time. But as I grew in the Lord I realized that we all have a choice (Deuteronomy 30:19). We can choose to sit in church every Sunday and then go our own way the rest of the week, or we can choose God’s way at every opportunity and enter into His abundant life. Sometimes His ways seem hard, and there is opposition, but when we stand for God’s ways we will come out the victor in the end. Pray that your loved ones would make that choice for God’s abundant life.
Pray that the Lord would work in them to give them the desire and power to do what pleases Him (Philippians 2:13). Someone once said to me, “You have to let the Spirit in before He can do His work.” We can pray that the Lord would give our loved ones the desire and the will to let the Spirit of God in, and that they would have a hunger for God’s word. We can pray that the Lord would give them what they need to be able to walk into His plan for their lives and that they would be strengthened and encouraged to not give up.
Sometimes I wonder if the person or people who prayed for me know the impact their prayers had on my life. The Lord delivered me from the occult, and the effects it had. My husband and I are now in ministry together, discipling Christians and seeing them set free from bondage. I am overwhelmed with thankfulness at what the Lord has done. Someone prayed for me, and their prayers changed my life.
© Carolyn Rice
Lord, I’m Broken is Now Available.
