Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

by Priscilla Shirer

God’s plan for you is to move you into a position of impact by infusing you with truth and employing you in prayer. You don’t need to be a genius to do it. You don’t need to learn ten-dollar words and be able to spout them with theological ease. You just need to bring your honest, transparent, available—and, let’s just say it—your fed-up, over-it, stepped-on-your-last-nerve self, and be ready to become fervently relentless. All in His name.

God is inviting you right now to realms of glory. To wide-open spaces of genuine freedom and possibility. To scenes where victory can become, no kidding, an everyday occurrence. You’ll think you’re just sitting in whatever little place you call your prayer closet, but you’ll actually be in a whole new world where He is King and where even your nastiest individual sins are utterly subject to His power.

If I were your enemy, I’d work to create division between you and other Christians, between groups of Christians, anyone with the potential for uniting in battle against me and my plans. I’d keep you operating individually, not seeing your need for the church or tying yourself too closely to its mission. Strength in numbers and unity of purpose . .

So we should not be surprised when Satan thwarts our unity as believers, in all kinds of different pairings and places where we interact with fellow Christians. He’ll do it in your local church. He’ll stir up a faction who thinks the pastor is woefully deficient in his preaching or his time management or his leadership style or his bedside manner.

He’ll do it in the global church too. He’ll augment the clashes of race and economics and doctrinal stances concerning issues of relatively minor importance, turning them into trench warfare among fellow believers in the body of Christ, further quieting the voice of the gospel behind loud debates over our firmly held positions.