Five Daily Personal Pinpoint Prayers, Part 2
Here’s this week’s entry from Pray Big for Your Life.
Pray for pardon: Lord, please forgive me today. On Super Bowl Sunday in 1995, seventeen-year-old Brandon Blendon climbed into his pickup and went for a drive after the game. He had an open can of beer propped between his legs and two more in his front seat. At an intersection, Brandon rear-ended a car that had stopped for a red light. The impact crushed and killed a four-year-old little girl who was secured in her safety seat in the back of the car.
A judge sentenced Brandon to twenty years in prison and ordered him to pay $520 dollars in restitution to the little girl’s parents. Brandon has to mail a weekly check to the family for $1 for ten years, with a note in the memo line reading, “For causing the death of your daughter Whitney!” While Whitney’s mom has forgiven Brandon and even visits him in prison, Brandon will never be able to escape the reality of what he did. He has an ugly, weekly reminder of what his sin cost, not just him, but several other innocents.[i]
Too many Christians live with terrible guilt over mistakes made years, even decades before. They live in the shadow of what they’ve done, not who they are in Christ, and in essence write checks to God in some unhealthy effort to remind themselves of what they’ve done and how bad they are. That’s not what God wants. He sent Christ to the cross to free us from our pasts, not chain us to them. Seeking God’s forgiveness in your daily prayers helps you keep your slate clean before God. It makes your yoke easy and keeps your burden light, which is exactly what Jesus offered (see Matthew 11:28-30).
Forgiveness is a powerful thing. It has the ability to transform a person’s life and shatter years of guilt and shame. It is one of the most freeing, life-giving gifts a person can receive, or give. That’s why Jesus commanded us to both seek forgiveness from God and extend it to others in his prayer. Forgiveness was important enough to Jesus to include it in his daily plan for pinpoint praying for our lives.
When you seek forgiveness from God, you’re acknowledging that there are still things—thoughts, habits, actions, inactions and attitudes—that are inconsistent with the call to be holy that God has placed on your life. Your prayer for forgiveness keeps your relationship with God fresh and vibrant. It also frees you.
When you forgive others in prayer, you’re also acknowledging the equal footing that we all have as desperate sinners before God. Failing to forgive others is sin for us, as it sets us up as a god over someone else. Jesus’s command to forgive here is based on simple, Kingdom logic: If God, who is holy and infinite, chooses to forgive us, then we who are unholy and finite must forgive as well. To not forgive makes us less forgiving than God.
In your daily prayers, be sure to pray for forgiveness from God and to forgive others before him. It will keep your relational world healthy and will keep you in a humble posture before God. Pray Colossians 3:13 for yourself: Father, please help me to bear with other people’s faults and to quickly forgive whatever grievances I may have against anyone. Help me to forgive as you forgave me.
Pray for protection: Lord, please keep me from Satan and sin today. I find it very intriguing that Jesus ended his prayer with an appeal for spiritual protection and deliverance. No person better understood the real nature of the battle between good and evil in our world than Jesus. But the good and evil that he knew of weren’t impersonal forces that blindly oppose each other and haphazardly influence people. Jesus didn’t believe in yin and yang, and he wasn’t talking about karma. Jesus believed in the devil. He’d fought him firsthand, so he spoke of his power from experience. Jesus felt that the threat of Satan to the lives of believers was significant enough to merit daily pinpoint praying against it.
When you pray for freedom from temptation and deliverance from evil (literally—the evil one), you’re asking God to help you spiritually discern the opportunities for failure that you face every day. Good spiritual discernment will help you to not only recognize temptation for what it is, but to also recognize Satan’s ultimate goal in the temptation. Jesus taught that Satan wants to kill, steal and destroy (John 10:10); we need to keep that in mind when flirting with temptations that look so benign on the surface.
This pinpoint prayer for protection asks God to allow only the temptations and tests into your life that will grow you and glorify him. Were Satan permitted to throw all of his dark powers against you, there would be no chance of your standing up against him. But by praying for spiritual protection, you ask God to put a cap on the degree to which Satan can harass and attack you. God actually uses his archenemy’s evil schemes to grow and develop you. He only allows that degree of temptation that you can successfully withstand and grow through (see 1 Corinthians 10:13).
You can’t go through your life free from temptation and satanic attack, but you can go through it victoriously. You don’t have to be a spiritual punching bag for the devil. Pray for protection. Pray Romans 16:19-20 for your life: Lord Jesus, make me wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil. I pray that you, the God of peace, would soon crush Satan under my feet.
Suit Up!
How would your life look differently if you prayed these simple pinpoint prayers for yourself every day? When Jesus gave us these potent prayers, he wasn’t just looking for sermon filler. Jesus believed and taught that if we would pray these requests for our lives, we would find ourselves living in the middle of God’s will and honoring his Kingdom. So here’s a question: Can you afford not to pray these prayers?
In Ephesians 6, Paul urged the believers in Ephesus to put on the whole spiritual armor of God (see Ephesians 6:10-17). Paul didn’t hesitate to pray for God’s daily covering for his life, and neither should we. Become a personal intercessor. Start seeking God’s perspective, priorities, provision, pardon and protection for your daily life. And be sure to keep a prayer journal. You won’t believe how much different your life will look in just a few months!
Discussion Questions
Before reading this chapter, had you ever heard of the concept of pinpoint praying or of praying the Scriptures? If so, what are some of the verses you pray most often to God?
What are two key ingredients in pinpoint prayers?
Why do you think prayers that are both biblical and specific are so powerful?
Have you ever looked at the Lord’s prayer as a guide for prayer and not just as the actual words you might say in a prayer? If so, how have you used the Lord’s prayer as a guide for your prayers in the past?
Lord’s prayer serves as a basis for pinpoint prayers in five areas of our lives. They are perspective, priority, provision, pardon and protection. Which one did you relate to the most? Which do you most need to pray for your life?
After reading this chapter, how will you pray differently for yourself?
[i] “Prisoner’s Pittance Is Meant As Reminder of a Great Loss,” by Rick Bragg, The New York Times, December 26, 1996.
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