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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Bless You

"Bless and do not curse."
Romans 12:14

The first time I tried to prepare this post my Blackberry decided to close down in the middle of it. Despite having already saved it three times, my work was gone, deleted, never to be seen again. It seems to me this is an important message.

Praying A Blessing
I have been reading The Grace Outpouring by Roy Godwin. It is the account of what is happening in a small retreat centre in Wales called Ffald-Y-Brenan. It is a remarkable tale of God working in people's lives to bring salvation, healing and wholeness.

What has thrilled me about what is going on there is that the leaders of the centre simply pray blessings over people and then step back and allow God to do what He wants. It is a very simply but powerful ministry steeped in prayer.

Expanding Our Prayers
It seems to me that when we pray for others we tend to pray "Accident and Emergency" prayers. We become aware of a problem and pray that it will go away or that God will help the person through the difficult time. For some time I've been aware that we need to be more expansive in our praying going beyond the A&E prayers and praying prayers of protection. But this book has opened my eyes to the power of simply blessing people.

The Caleb Prayer
We are familiar with the Levitical blessing in Numbers 6:

The Lord bless you and keep you,
The Lord make His face to shine upon you & be gracious to you,
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.

That is a powerful scriptural blessing which we can pray over one another. But out of Ffald-Y-Brenan has come another blessing we can use to pray for our nation, known as the Caleb Prayer:

O High King of heaven,
Have mercy on our land.
Revive your church;
Send the Holy Spirit
For the sake of the children.
May your kingdom come to our nation.
In Jesus' might name. Amen.

Prayer College Assignment
Begin praying blessings over people in your prayer time in addition to your usual intercession and see what God will do.