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

by Priscilla Shirer

In prayer you gain your strength—the power to gird yourself with armor that extinguishes every weapon your enemy wields.

So we strap on weapons that work—weapons divinely authorized for our success in spiritual warfare: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of peace. Then we take up the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, as well as the sword—the very Word of God.

Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere. And pray

And because prayer is the divinely ordained mechanism that leads you into the heart and the power and the victory of Christ, he knows you’ll remain defeated and undone without it.

Trying to figure out why the hope and enthusiasm you feel in church doesn’t follow you to the four walls you live within.

Strategy 2—Against Your Focus

Strategy 3—Against Your Identity

Strategy 4—Against Your Family

Strategy 5—Against Your Confidence

Strategy 7—Against Your Purity

Strategy 8—Against Your Rest and Contentment

Strategy 9—Against Your Heart

we’d better be on our guard. And we’d better not ever forget—like

Those strategies help me remember to pray. And what to pray. And in doing so, I get dressed up in my spiritual armor, even while I’m getting dressed for the day.

He can’t be everywhere at once (only God is omnipresent). He can’t read your mind (only God is omniscient).

He is merely an illusionist, using cunning trickery to deceive and mislead (only God can work flat-out, unmistakable miracles).

He’s running out of time (our God is eternal).

You and I, coming to the Father through the mighty name of Jesus, can pray like the victorious saints of God we’ve been empowered to be.

P—Praise:

Gratitude

R—Repentance:

Line your strategies with repentance: the courage to trust, and turn, and walk His way.

A—Asking:

Write down details of your own issues and difficulties as they relate to the broader issue we...

Y—Yes:

There is nothing more powerful than praying God’s own Word.

Prayer Releases All Your Eternal Resources

Let’s pray.

Fervent prayer is fueled by passion. By faith. By fire.

passion is what plasters your knees to that floor. And digs in for dear life. It’s your oomph. Your hutzpah. Your cutting edge.

Passion is the fuel in the engine of your purpose. It’s your “want-to.”

I could chip away at your zeal, at your hope, at your belief in God and what He can do, I could chisel down your faith to a whimper. Make you want to quit. And never try again.

satanic sabotage. It’s a strategy. Against you. On purpose. An assault launched with pinpoint planning and detail.

Condemnation always leads to guilt-laden discouragement, while conviction—though often painful in pointing out our wrongdoing—still somehow encourages and lifts us, giving us hope to rebuild on.

God says those same weaknesses are reason for your purest worship and gratitude.

And yet he has the gall to insinuate that God is the one who lies to you, that any delay in the Lord’s visible response to your prayer is open-and-shut evidence that He doesn’t really hear you like He says. Or if He does, He apparently doesn’t mind seeing you writhe in discomfort while you wait on His own sweet timing.

Satan would like to convince you that your lack of passion is an indication that God was either never there at all or has gotten disgusted with you and left.

there’s little chance the ax would’ve ever become gradually loosened and ultimately dislodged. This tells me that being engaged in good, even godly, productive things is not an automatic guard against losing your cutting edge.

That’s why when you’re sensing a drag in your faith, in your spiritual fire, it can sometimes simply mean you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing . . . and doing it well, at that.

The presence of passion, faith, and belief in our hearts is a gift. It’s on loan to our souls.

Divinely recovered.

Nothing—nothing!—is too far gone that your God cannot resurrect it. Even your cutting edge. So go to Him to get it back.

Prayer can be silent and still seethe with passion. And on some days, at some times, prayer—for any of us—can start out as simply an obedient appointment, an act of discipline, showing up in that prayer closet because it’s the appointed time that we said we’d be there.

Call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. (Jer. 29:12–13)

new heart

new spirit

heart of ...

It’s simply about holding out your open hands—in thanksgiving first, in gratitude for God’s faithfulness and His goodness and His assured, accomplished victory over the enemy. Then asking. Asking for what He already wants to give you. Then waiting (expecting) to receive the promise of newness and freshness from His Spirit as you go along,

He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth. (Hos. 6:3)

How does a person receive rain? Not by prying it loose from the sky but just by watching it fall, by standing in the downpour, by thanking Him for opening up the floodgates and sending what He knows we need and can’t get for ourselves, yet what He so faithfully, regularly, and graciously gives.