Are you doing more than God has asked you to do? Or are you doing it in your own power? Because if you’re doing either of those things, you’re at risk for burnout, break down, or bursting out in anger at the ones you love.
Take time to breathe. Lay down before the Lord everything you’re busy with. Ask Him which of those He wants you to do, and which are something your own guilt, or someone or something else is driving you to do.
What has God asked you to do that you haven’t done yet?
What’s keeping you from obedience?
What are you doing that He never asked you to do?
And what are you doing in your own power?
Ask Him. Then step out in obedience.
Philippians 4:13, Proverbs 3:5-6, John 5:19, Galatians 1:10
Check out these resources to help put your schedule and your heart back into Jesus’ hands:
DELIGHT TO BE A WOMAN OF WONDER, by Mikaela Vincent: Deep devotional Bible study for overcoming the enemy in the battlefield of the mind
2024 DELIGHT TO BE A WOMAN OF WONDER POWER PLANNER – Day planner, time management schedule organizer for surrendering every day and every plan into Jesus’ hands to make them His and let His Spirit empower you to do more than you could ever have done on your own
For these and other deep devotional Bible studies, day planners and prayer journals on walking as one with Christ and overcoming the enemy, visit MoreThanAConquerorBooks.com.
Daily walking in the Spirit’s leading
Mikaela Vincent and her husband are missionaries who live by faith, trusting in God to provide for their needs as they pray for and share Christ with the nations. If you would like to help their ministry through a donation, or by shopping at Mikaela’s online bookstore, click the buttons below:
Any proceeds this author receives from the sale of the deep devotional Bible studies and other MoreThanAConquerorBooks.com books mentioned in this post go to shining Christ’s light in the darkness and seeing the nations come to Him.
But please ignore unrelated advertisements WordPress places here. The author has not approved those links and does not receive any money from them.
Thank you for your support! If you have any questions or want to help with this ministry, please contact Mikaela.
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14 KJV
With the whole earth caught in the grip of this pandemic, it’s time now to ask the Lord for a shift in the battle for the nations, so that millions of lost will come to Christ, and strong, vibrant, multiplying churches, grounded in truth and love, will spring up all over the world.
Will you join me?
Tomorrow May 5, let’s set aside the day to pray for a global awakening to God’s love.
In preparation, I encourage you to write lists in your prayer journal of neighbors who are lost, nations God has placed on your heart, missionaries, top 50 nations where Christians are persecuted, ministries that fight against abuse and human trafficking, and anything else the Lord lays on your heart. Begin praying even now for spouses and children who are undergoing abuse during quarantine, for frontline workers who are experiencing anxiety, for government leaders, and especially for every heart to hunger for the Lord. Let’s seek Him for a global breakthrough, so that millions, even billions will be saved, and strong, vibrant churches will be planted all over the world, even in the least likely of places.
Below, I’ve written out some suggestions for how to get your family, church, or others involved. But you’re welcome to pray any way the Lord leads you. You can also sign up here for afree guide to knowing God’s voice.
Fast until supper.
Cook an international dinner, and pray together during the meal.
Have a family worship service, and spend time in prayer for the nations.
Lay a map of the world out on the floor, or use a globe, and lay hands on each country as you pray.
Let each person in your family (church, Bible study group, etc.) choose a country to pray for. Do research on that country’s specific problems, needs, government, religion, etc., and pray with purpose, either on your own or together over the internet.
Write out your prayers for governments, peoples, nations, the hurting, the persecuted … and post them on social media, so others can join you in praying for that.
Prayerwalk your neighborhood or other areas where there are internationals, businesses, families in need, or others God lays on your heart.
Do drive-by prayer to cover government seats, businesses, hospitals, internationals, the elderly, schools, homeless, churches, etc.
Make a poster, and write out the prayers and verses God lays on your heart, and then keep that poster somewhere where you can continue to pray daily.
Write the prayers and verses in your journal, and keep it by your Bible, so you will continue to pray daily for worldwide revival.
Other ideas (Please share in the comments. 👇)
Lord, we ask You for the nations. Please bring forth a mighty revival all across the world. Turn every heart to You. Suppress wrong, and increase right. Expose evil, and give every person from every nation a hunger for what is right and good and holy. Make seekers out of every lost heart. May they seek You in earnest and find You, Lord. Come and meet them in their dreams, in their trials, in their sin, in their triumphs, and in their failures. Bring them to their knees, so desperate for a Savior, that when they hear Your Good News, they will turn to You and be saved. For the backslidden, Lord, we ask You to break the bonds that tie them to the enemy’s plans for their lives, and set them free to run after You with all their hearts. Reunite marriages. Heal the sick. Make the lame to walk, and the blind to see. And do it in a way that all will know You are the One Who did that. Usher in an unprecedented era of miraculous signs and wonders by Your hand that will turn the world’s attention to You. Whenever someone cries out to You, Lord, hear their prayers, and answer. Show the world Your love. Show them You are strong. That You are more than enough. That You are the One they are looking for. That You alone are Good. And that You love us with a love that is without borders. May every tribe and language know that You alone are God. In Your precious name. Amen.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations…,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back.” Jeremiah 29:11-14 NIV
Join us to pray for the nations May 5, 2020. For more information, click here.
For guided prayer journals, Bible studies and other books for all ages on walking as one with Christ and making a difference in the world, visit MoreThanAConquerorBooks.com.
What must it have been like for Jesus to wash the feet of Peter, knowing he would soon deny Him? … or of Judas, knowing he would betray Him? John 13.
What an example Jesus gave us to love those near to us, even when the things they do and say are not so lovely! Romans 12:9-21.
How have you “washed the feet” of your spouse recently? Or that rebellious child? Or that friend you loved and trusted who betrayed a confidence?
I know it’s hard, beloved. These are trying times. Love has grown scarce in so many hard places, and sparse where once it flourished with great fruit. But take heart. For I have overcome the world, and I am yet here with you. John 16:33. You do not have to do this on your own. And the love I require from you is not even within your own power to give. Matthew 22:37-40. For I am calling you to a greater Love. Tap into My everlasting, all-abundant, never-ending flow, and let Me rush through you like a mighty River, overflowing your “on-edges” and spilling out onto everyone around you, … effortless and true, … because I am the One flowing in you, and you are overflowing with Me….
But to get there, My beloved, you must step into the Secret Place. You cannot keep going in your own energy or you will wear out; what you spend on others will deplete and spoil all too soon. They will not have the best of you, until you first give your best to Me. Find in My currents the rest and nourishment you need to wash over what wears you down, cleanse what has festered, and renew your weary soul with life and breath and joy abundant.
Come. I’m waiting for you.
O Lord, be for me my Fountain of Living Waters. Jeremiah 2:13.
Have you ever been through a “wilderness” season — trials beating you like a relentless desert wind, and mountains looming so high, you thought you’d never make it out?
Are you in that wilderness now?
I’ve been there. As if living thousands of miles from family in a country where Christians are persecuted isn’t “wilderness” enough, a few years ago, we went through six long years where many loved ones died, and my closest friends attacked me, cutting me out of their lives. Other tragedies howled against us, as well — too many to write in one blog. Suffice it to say, it was hard.
But Jesus….
He awakened me in the wee hours of every morning, and calmed my racing heart. He healed my wounds, set me free from what made my grief all the more painful, and set straight what the enemy had knocked askew.
You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek You; I thirst for You, my whole being longs for You, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
I have seen You in the sanctuary (of my wilderness) and beheld Your power and Your glory. Because Your love is better than life, my lips will glorify You.
From Psalm 63:1-3 niv
“Persecution bleeds anointing,” one of my friends once said. And it did.
Each book the Lord has called me to write together with Him in our quiet times has flowed from that anointing. The lost have come to Christ. Hearts have been healed and set free. Strongholds have fallen. Marriages have mended. Teens have caught on fire for Christ, and their parents, too. The wilderness was worth it.
But even more worth it is walking hand in hand with Jesus, feeling enveloped by the Lord’s presence constantly, like living every moment in the mist of His breath.
He found (me) in a desert land, in the howling wasteland of a wilderness; He (encircled and shielded me). He took care of (me). He protected (me) as the apple of His eye.
As beautiful as that sounds, when I sought the Lord at the beginning of 2019 for His word over this past year, “wilderness,” was not the answer I wanted to hear.
I’ve always thought of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in Luke 4 as agonizing, lonely, hungry, thirsty, dangerous, surrounded by wild animals, with no roof over His head, and nowhere comfortable to sleep; not to mention that sinister visit from Satan. Reminds me a bit of my own howling wasteland.
But in a dream the Lord gave me, I saw Jesus smiling at me, hand outstretched, welcoming me into His wilderness. He pulled me up onto the edge of a high cliff with a spectacular view of the rising sun, as it poured out its brilliant colors upon the desert. The Father’s thick presence enveloped me, and took my breath away. I looked at Jesus standing next to me, holding my hand, the fire of the sun lighting up the joy in His eyes. “Now, this is the wilderness!”
I realized for the first time how glorious, how radiant, how powerful and even joyful those 40 days of alone-time with His Daddy must have been.
When I awoke from the dream, I stepped into a 40-day fast to start out the year. (I’ve actually been on a fast from certain foods for about three years now, praying for the unreached millions in this dark corner of the world where God has called us to serve Him. But this was a greater fast on top of the first — complete during the day, and then joining up with the first fast at night.) Was I hungry? Yes. And yet, completely satisfied, for my Father was with me.
And then … our family traveled constantly for many months, far from home, laying our heads down in a new place every few nights. Many of those beds were on the floor or otherwise uncomfortable. And we did see a lot of wilderness. In fact, one week, we stayed in the middle of a jungle on the top of a cliff at the end of nowhere, with a murderer on the loose in that very jungle. We had no phone service, no electricity, no locks on the doors of the house, and no neighbors to yell to if we got in trouble. But we had the Lord, and He surrounded us and spoke to us, and filled our days with more of Him. We slept in peace, knowing His angels guarded us. If that murderer had walked through those open doors, he would have found a hot meal, and an earful of the Gospel!
Now, at the end of the year and beginning 2020, the darkness has darkened all the more in the corner of the world where we live. Most of our friends and other Christians have fled or are in hiding because of increased threats and persecution. We don’t know what this year will bring, but we know the One Who holds our hand, and He is Good.
Whether or not the coming days are hard for you, I pray you’ll find peace and rest, carried by the One Who lovingly allows the trials so we will draw closer to Him. May your wilderness bleed anointing.
Here is my prayer for you:
Lord, open up our eyes to see as You see, to not be distracted by other things in our view that move us away from You. Please, God, get up in our face. Invade our space. Make sure we SEE what You’re doing, such that we can’t miss it. Grab our face in Your hands and hold our gaze, Lord. We need You. Now more than ever. Open up our ears to hear Your voice over all other voices. Captivate us with the songs You’re singing over us, so that we catch the tune and sing along. Let us hear Your heart for the nations, and join in those prayers to see Your Kingdom come. Move us at the sound of Your voice. Don’t let us become stagnant or complacent. But speak so clearly, so powerfully to our hearts, Lord, that we tremble with holy fear, and fall on our faces before You, completely surrendered, and overwhelmed with such awe, that all we want to do is obey You. Open up our hearts to bond with Yours, Lord. As we look at the people around us, distract us from our judgments and criticisms with Your LOVE and GRACE and TENDERNESS. Break our hearts for what breaks Yours, Lord, and open us up to truly love those around us. To stop making every situation about me. And to finally become about truly loving You and loving others. Matthew 22:37-40. Draw us into Your arms of love, Lord, so we can love others, not in the way we think we should, but with Your powerful, life-transforming Spirit flowing through us like a River to touch, renew, knock down the old, and cleanse with the new. Flow through us, before us, around us, and behind us everywhere we go this year, so that everyone who knows us gets “wet” with Your Living Water, and thirsts for more of You, until they all dive into that River themselves. Make us light in others’ darkness, shelter from their storm, and confident in our own Light and Shelter in You. In Your name. Amen.
I encourage you to take time to look over what God did last year, find the miracles and the things He has taught you, and seek Him for what He has in store for you in 2020.
In fact, seeking the Lord together as a family, and walking out in obedience as one, is a powerful way to train your kids up in listening to the Lord and following His lead. Proverbs 3:5-6, John 5:19.
This is one of my favorite methods for doing that:
Gather everyone together, and begin the time with prayer, asking the Lord to speak to your hearts and show you anything He desires.
Invite everyone present to personally ask Jesus what He wants to say (In this case, ask Him for a verse or word or picture or whatever He’d like to show you about this coming year.)
Leave time to listen for His answer. You can play soft worship music in the background, if you like, or just be silent. They can dig in the Word, write in their journals, draw or color what He shows them, or anything they feel led to do.
Then invite everyone to share what came to mind.
If the Lord leads, put those drawings, words, or verses somewhere where you can look at them often throughout the year and talk together about how you see God doing those things, as the months progress.
If you’d like a deep devotional Bible study for 2020, try Delight to Be a Woman of Wonder (for her) and Dare to Be a Mighty Warrior (for him). With 100 practical, tactical strategies for overcoming the enemy in the battlefield of the mind, these one-page devotionals deep in the Word offer steps to removing the barriers to oneness with Christ and others. For more deep Bible studies, devotionals, prayer journals, novels, and children’s books on listening to God, breaking free from strongholds, overcoming trials, and walking in intimacy with Christ, visit MoreThanAConquerorBooks.com. (All proceeds the author receives go to sharing God’s love in far reaches of the world where few have heard His name.)
Kingdom Culture Parenting 