Prayer over success and important happenings

[Chrysostom]

We have heard your request and we join you in bringing it before the Lord with thanksgiving in the name of Jesus Christ, through whom alone we have salvation and access to the Father.

You ask for favor, miracles, blessings, and glory over happenings from decades past and for victory against principalities and powers of darkness. We stand with you to pray, but we want to pray as Scripture teaches us to pray, so that our prayer seeks what God calls good.

Scripture teaches that true favor from God is not simply outward success as the world counts success, but His grace to walk worthily of the Lord, to be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, and to bear fruit in every good work. So we pray that whatever happened in those years, God would bring it fully under His lordship. Where there has been faithfulness and good fruit, we ask Him to establish it and cause it to continue for His glory before, during and after. Where there has been sin, hurt, or choices outside His design, we do not ask Him to bless what He calls sin, but we ask for His mercy, for repentance where needed, for forgiveness through the blood of Christ, and for healing and restoration according to His truth.

God has shown us that His design for marriage is a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, and that sexual intimacy and living together belong within that covenant. Any other path, however sincere, does not bring His blessing as it stands, but it can be brought to Him for cleansing and renewal. So we pray that every relationship and every part of your story would be conformed to His holy pattern, and that you would know the freedom and blessing of walking in obedience to Him.

You ask for miracles. The miracles of Christ and His apostles were not given for display or for mere worldly gain, but as pledges of His power to confirm His word and to make His invisible kingdom manifest, and they were always joined to a life of holiness. For miracles without a changed life are nothing, and all grace is freely received so that we may freely give. We therefore pray not for miracles on demand, but that God in His wisdom would work what is truly best, whether through ordinary providence or through extraordinary power, always to draw hearts to Christ and to build holy character.

You rightly discern that we are in a warfare. Scripture calls it a good warfare, not a bad one that yields our members to uncleanness. It requires sober minds, skill in the Scriptures, awakened hearts and continual vigilance, clothed in the armor of God. So we pray against the real principalities and powers of darkness, that God would guard you from the enemy, quench every accusation, and strengthen you to stand in faith, truth, righteousness, and the gospel of peace, with prayer and the word of God.

Therefore let us pray together:

Father, in the name of Jesus Christ Your Son, we thank You that You hear prayer. We ask that You would fill our brother and sister with the knowledge of Your will, that they may walk in a manner worthy of You and pleasing to You. Look upon all that happened in those years past. Redeem what can be redeemed, forgive what needs forgiveness, heal what was broken, and establish what was done in faith and love. Grant not merely worldly success, but eternal blessing, the favor that comes from doing what virtue requires. Keep us from empty and superfluous pleas and lead us to faithful toil in Your service. Protect us from the schemes of darkness and make us strong for the good warfare You have called us to. Let Your glory be seen not as human boasting, but as lives transformed by Christ, bearing fruit that remains. All this we ask with thanksgiving, trusting Your goodness and Your power to do above what we ask, according to Your will, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory forever. Amen.

 

[Silas]

Thank you for sharing your heart and inviting prayer over events from many years ago and over your desire for God's favor, blessing and glory to be seen. It is good to bring the past, the present and the future under the lordship of Jesus Christ and to seek His will above all.

Scripture teaches that our deepest struggles are not against flesh and blood but against spiritual powers. There is a real conflict in the unseen realm between the holy angels who serve God and the fallen angels who followed Satan in rebellion. Often we are not fully aware of that conflict, yet we feel its effects in unsettling emotions, heaviness, irritation or discouragement. What you described as principalities and powers of darkness in high places is real, and God calls us to be sensitive to that reality without living in fear.

The victory over those powers has already been won. At the cross Jesus triumphed over every principality and power and made an open display of that victory. Satan was defeated there once and for all through Christ's finished work. Because of that, the weapons God has given us are not carnal or human methods, but spiritual weapons that are mighty through God to pull down strongholds. When we try to fight in our own strength or with human strategies we lose ground, but when we remain in the spiritual realm through prayer, through abiding in Christ, and through the Word, we can stand in the victory that is already His. As we abide in Him, His victory becomes our victory, and we can come against the enemy's influence in the name of Jesus with confidence, not in ourselves but in what Christ has done.

That victory is also personal. Whatever area where the flesh has had control, God offers real deliverance. The way into it is not by trying harder but by recognizing we cannot change ourselves and by turning the matter completely over to Jesus. We reckon our old nature to be dead with Christ and trust His Spirit to do what we could not do for ourselves. Then the praise goes to Him alone for what He has wrought in us.

You prayed repeatedly for favor and miracles and success. God is certainly able to do miracles, and if we have a right understanding of who God is, miracles should not trouble our faith. He is both able and willing to act according to His wisdom and love. At the same time God does not work to create a show, and His greatest work is often the more excellent way of bringing us into true fellowship with Himself and conforming us to Christ. True success in Scripture is not measured by repeating words for blessing, but by walking in obedience to God's Word. As God told Joshua, when we meditate on His Word day and night and observe to do what it says, we find the path of prosperity and good success that He defines. That is the success worth praying for over those events from decades ago as well as today, that God would redeem them, use them for His purposes, and cause your life to bear fruit for His glory.

A key to walking in that victory day by day is praise and rejoicing in what Christ has already accomplished. Scripture says thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ and who always causes us to triumph in Christ, and that we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. That means we can have victory in our hearts even before we see the outcome, by rejoicing in the Lord's triumph over darkness. As we rejoice, heaviness lifts, irritation fades, and we experience the difference His victory makes.

So I stand with you in prayer that the Lord would cover those past happenings and all that follows with His redeeming hand, that any stronghold of the enemy would be broken through the power of the cross, that you would be strengthened to use the spiritual weapons He has provided, and that your life would increasingly know His victory, His peace and His glory. May you continue in faith, which is the victory that overcomes the world, trusting not in repeated phrases but in the living Christ who has already overcome.

Father, in the name of Jesus Christ we bring these past events and this present desire for Your favor before You. We thank You for the victory won at the cross over every power of darkness. We ask that You would pull down any stronghold, guard this heart and mind in Christ, and lead into deeper abiding, obedience and praise. Let Your will be done and let all glory be Yours for what only You can do. Amen.