Cultivating peace within the home but today we’re going to specifically be talking about living and saturating your home in prayer When we talk about peace, I find that it’s almost impossible to talk about it without mentioning prayer without mentioning Thanksgiving without mentioning so many other characteristics hence the reason why this cultivating peace series will seem to be never ending because there’s just so many different categories but as mothers uh keepers of the home we are Keepers and creators of Peace within our home so if you have not seen any of my other series that I’ve done on these I will have them linked down below because they I I’d say they’re pretty much very foundational um and there’s a lot that I talk about in the other ones that I think would just be really wise to hear from in addition to prayer so why are we talking about prayer well in 1 Corinthians 14:33 which actually happens to be the prayer I was teaching my kids this week.
And it says that our God is not a god of confusion but of peace, so knowing that any confusion any strife, or any of these negative things that we are feeling and seeing within our home don’t come from the Lord, simply put, is that our God is the God of Peace if you look at first John 16:33 Jesus is talking to his disciples and he’s about to go up and he’s kind of explaining this the disciples are like wait what do you mean where are you going I don’t understand and he says I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace in this world you will have trouble but take heart I have overcome the world in second he says now may the Lord of Peace himself give you peace at all times in every way the Lord will be with you and this was Paul that was talking and this is after he wrote first and 2 Thessalonians and so he’s kind of ending all of what he just told them and he’s saying that the Lord of Peace himself will give us peace at all times in every way and then if you go again to John 14:27 he says peace I leave with you; my peace, I give you; I do not give to you as the world gives Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid In Matthew 59, he says blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Let the Peace of Christ rule in your hearts Since the members of one body are called to peace, we have to ask ourselves again: What are the fruits of the spirit? We can find that in Galatians 522, but the fruit of the spirit is love joy peace kindness goodness faithfulness love gentleness and self-control Against such things, there is no law, and so I mean, I could honestly be going on for hours and hours on different verses and what scripture says about peace, so just know that apart from Christ we cannot have peace,, and so that hasn’t been made clear yet, like, let’s just really sit in that in order for us to even have peace within our homes, we have to dwell with Christ; he is the only one that can give that to us.
way that we are able to communicate with our father communicate with our heavenly father in 1 Thessalonians 5:116 it says Rejoice always pray continuously give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Jesus Christ so he’s telling us to Rejoice always and to always be praying and the Bible makes it very clear that we are to pray without ceasing and then it even says in James 5 that the prayers we are to confess our sins to one another pray for one another for the prayers of a righteous person is powerful and effective and it says that Elijah was a human being even as we are and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain and it did not rain on the land for 3 and 1/2 years and then he prayed again and the heavens gave rain and the Earth produced its crops so he’s telling us and the scripture is just so beautiful because it gives different examples so Elisha is over here praying that it wouldn’t rain so much so that it didn’t rain for 3 years and then if we look at Hannah, Hannah didn’t have any children. prayed for children and the Lord blessed her with not only a child but also Samuel, who went out and did the most amazing incredible things and so we have to hone in on the fact that without prayer, there is no power There is so much immense power in prayer. Where there’s prayer, there’s power. Now, the Bible makes it very clear that we can’t treat prayer like a little genie. It makes it very clear that we are to pray and ask for the Lord’s will. In 1 John 5:14, it says this is the confidence that we have in approaching God; if we ask anything according to his will he hears us and so for us to say Lord I have always always wanted a yacht You know, maybe a yacht doesn’t have to be too big; you know, maybe fit 20 people, but, you know, Lord, I really want to yacht, and if we get upset that that doesn’t happen, we say, Well, God kind of stinks; I mean, I didn’t get my yacht.
Um, that’s not how we ought to treat prayer, and so I wanted to kind of highlight how Jesus tells us to pray, and then I was going to walk through the five W’s of who, what, when, why, and where to pray, so if we flip over to Matthew 6, Jesus is talking, and he’s telling his disciples how to pray. Literally, he’s like, This is like a foundational verse here because it’s literally Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray, okay? Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full, but when you pray Go in your room, close the door, and pray to your father, who is unseen. Your father, who sees what is done in secret will reward you and when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they will be heard because of their many words Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. This is how you should pray Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be thy Hallowed Be Your Name, Your Kingdom Come, Your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us our daily bread and forgive us for our debts. Forgiven our debts and led us not into temptation but delivered us from the evil one, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others of their sin, your father will not forgive you. Boom, there’s a whole lot in that, am I right? I mean, he just said a whole lot of stuff first. The Bible tells us that he does it when we don’t even have words to pray and words to say, like when we are literally speechless; we don’t know what to pray; we’re so frustrated; we’re so angry; we’re so filled in the blank of this emotion; you just don’t have words.
The Holy Spirit literally intercedes on your behalf and prays for you, like, Hello, is that not the coolest thing you’ve ever heard come on?This is so cool, and then he says for us what to pray, and if you kind of outline what he’s saying, he’s saying our father in heaven. He’s acknowledging who God is, acknowledging his almightiness, acknowledging his character, giving us our daily bread, and forgiving us of our debts, as we have also forgiven our DTS, leading us not into temptation but to deliver us from the evil One. If you forgive one another when they sin, your heavenly father will also forgive you. Now, this kind of piggybacks off of what James 5 says about confessing our sins to one another and so kind of going into answering the five W’s who what when to pray, I also want to proface with the idea that before even entering a place of prayer, ask the Lord for forgiveness. Foress, it says that the prayers of a righteous person are powerful and heard, so we have to make sure that we are walking in obedience, and I kind of talked about a lot of this in the previous episodes, but I just want to keep harping on it again because walking in disobedience and willful disobedience is one thing, but walking in disobedience, well, let me rephrase that: walking in disobedience and not knowing is one thing; walking in deliberate disobedience is a whole other thing, and so ask yourself the question: am I currently walking in disobedience? I know what I’m doing is wrong, and I am not choosing to kill and die. I’m willing, like I’m willingly not walking by the spirit, I am walking by my flesh or have you recently been convicted of something and it’s the Lord has made it very clear what you ought to do but it’s just been difficult to part with ways from the sin, or it’s been uncomfortable, or it’s just that the sin is just so comfortable that walking away from that seems very strange and hard, and so I want to encourage you to kind of just spend moments with the Lord reflecting on this before entering into a holy place of prayer Now let’s talk about who’s.
What’s when wise and where? Because this is the theme of having an oversaturated home of prayer, and so who are we even praying for? I would start off by praying for yourself. I know that may sound strange and maybe even selfish, but I think it is wise to pray for yourself because if the Lord is not consistently working in you and changing you, it’s going to be very difficult for those of us around us, and so I would pray for your spouse or future spouse. I think it’s so wise for mothers and wives to constantly be praying. For our husbands, whether we have husbands or not, one of the wisest things that a single woman can do is pray for her future husband every single day. You have no idea what your current husband is going through right now or how the prayers that you are praying are impacting him, so we should just be deliberately praying for them. I could honestly do an entire video talking about praying for our husbands, because that’s a whole other topic. I kind of talked about it in my submission series, but man, this is so important. You need to be praying for your children. Your current children, your future children, and the children around you need to make sure that we are stewarding them well. They are gifts, and so the Lord has entrusted us. How gracious is he to entrust us and then not walk away and say peace out? I’m giving you these blessings Figure out how to deal with them like no one else. The Lord wants to walk our hand through this entire process of raising them, so rely on him and ask him for wisdom and Guidance Pray for your family members, your parents, your siblings, your cousins, and everyone else in your circle and vicinity, whether you like them or not You guys, if anything, if you don’t like them, then you should be actually really, really, really praying for them because we do not repay evil with evil. The Bible makes it clear that if someone hurts us or does evil to us and steals from us, we are to feed them. The Bible literally tells us that when someone wrongs us, we are to go out of our way to keep the peace.
We are to go out of our way to extend God’s love to them, and so even if there’s someone that you can’t stand and have a really hard time with, that is the person you should probably be spending the most time praying for. Pray for strangers Pray for your friends I mean, anytime I’m out in public and I see someone I don’t know, I feel like the Lord always calls me to pray for people when I see them in public. Now I’m not walking up to them, screaming at them, and praying all these things. I am praying in my head, but I have no idea what the Lord is going to do with that. We have no idea; I’m just being obedient. Next thing, what are we praying for in wisdom? I always start off with wisdom We can never have too much wisdom and depart from God; we have no wisdom, so we need to pray for wisdom The Bible says that if you pray for wisdom, those who ask for wisdom will be given wisdom, and so you will be a fool to not pray for wisdom all the time because who doesn’t want to be wise? I mean, come on, I would like to be wise because, like God, the almighty God has all the wisdom pray for wisdom Pray for faith Maybe there’s something in your life right now where your faith is too small and you’re not able to see the bigger picture We don’t have enough faith in what God can do Pray for increased faith. Pray for discernment Discipline is huge; not a lot of people have it nowadays Y’all pray for discernment We need to discern the times we’re in. We need to discern the people we’re with.
Watching what’s coming in and out of our home, we need to have discernment on point at all times and God will give that to us We need to pray for guidance and wise counsel There are so many things that we can pray for for our health. Gosh, I could go on and on and on. Just talk to the Lord. When are we to pray literally all day? The Bible says to pray without ceasing to pray all the time It doesn’t matter if it’s in the middle of the night doesn’t matter if it’s first thing in the morning we are to pray at all times if this is something that you’ve struggled with a little encouragement that I have is to pair prayer with a habit that you’re constant L doing so let’s say you’re you brush your teeth every morning start incorporating every time you brush your teeth you pray for your uh one of your children and then when you do the dishes you pray for your mom and when you drive to work you pray for your husband when you nurse the baby you pray for that baby when you are working out I don’t know if you pair someone with something—a habit that you are consistently doing to keep you in the Rhythm and remembrance of prayer Once I started doing this, you guys changed my prayer life. It was like it had drastically changed. I remember I started doing it with my daughter when I was breastfeeding, because I find myself breastfeeding many, many, many times a day, and I said, You know what? I’m not going to let this time go in vain. I’m devoting this time to prayer.
And devote it to prayer Why should we pray? Well, this is because what God’s word says is that for us to do that, we literally have the ability to speak to the god, the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and Omega, the one who literally created the heavens and the earth, and the ability to talk to that man. Let that sit in for a second That is not a small thing Not only that but we can talk to him at all times We don’t have to pay anything. We don’t have to say any fancy words It literally says to not keep babbling on because we could be babbling on; we don’t have to do this ritual; we don’t; we literally can talk to God at any moment I don’t let that, do not let that element ever become something that you’re numb to because I think we often do now the last W is where and I feel like I’ve kind of already dressed this one but anywhere doesn’t matter where you are What you’re doing, what you’re not doing, on your way to work, on your way back from work, in the closet, in the shower, while you’re doing dishes I mean, y’all know I have a prayer closet that feels like my holy space but you don’t need to have a prayer closet; you can literally pray any and everywhere that you are and so this is such a beautiful practice and I want to encourage you guys to pray out loud I know a lot of people are in the habit of praying out loud before they eat a meal together but let your children hear your prayers Let your children know what you’re praying for through them, or if you are on your way somewhere and you’re about to meet a friend like me, I will literally say it out loud with my kids as I’m unbuckling them from the car. Say, Lord, I pray that you guide our conversation.