These twelve prayers have a special purpose in the ministry of reconciliation, but they are not the only prayers that you will pray. Please keep that in mind. In the last post, we described the many areas of prayer that you should cover regularly.

We talked about your different areas of authority in prayer, spiritual authority, positional authority, relational authority and personal authority. And that is a very important area of powerful and effective prayer and is integrally involved in the ministry of reconciliation. No doubt.

We also talked about the Prayer of Confession and ongoing Repentance as well as talking to God in a very specific way based on his two questions to us in Forgiveness and Reconciliation. Obviously, very important as well.

Petitionary prayer both on the Creational (Illness, Finances, and Relationships) and Redemptive (Ministry, Evangelism, Discipleship) levels is also a key ingredient in our prayer life. I even have a “special” designation between the two under the title of my Life Ministry for anything else that comes up that is unexpected.

That is already a lot to pray for but then you can add prayer for your Spiritual Disciplines which train you to fight the good fight of faith, the Spiritual Armor that protects you from the flaming arrows of the Evil One. You can pray for your Spiritual Fruit which will support you as you desire to walk in holiness in the way of the cross and your Spiritual Gifts (and Creational Skills) that will help you to fulfill your Life Ministry.

Have I left anything out? Probably. Is it a lot of work? Yes, it is. Is it worth it? Most certainly you will become dependent on this prayer life to the extent that you are actually involved in ministry. If it is just a list of things to be done to get a gold star on your prayer chart it is no better than praying for nameless missionaries in foreign countries, you may never have heard of before. Useless. You need to be involved in ministry. That is the missing link. Without the context of ministry, developing the character and mind of Christ is impossible.

And yes, there will be spiritual warfare around your prayer life. That is why you need accountability and help to stay the course. Do not take any of this lightly. It is far too important to overstate.

So why do I add twelve more prayers to the long list that we have already talked about? Because they are specific prayers for specific situations that may not need to be prayed every day but will be needed in the spiritual warfare around the ministry of reconciliation and our Life Ministry. Some of these prayers may make sense to you right off the bat but others may only make sense once you are in the heat of battle. Some of them are more for spiritual leaders (which we are all on the way to becoming) and some for those who are just getting started. I will try to describe them the best way I can.

We will start with the most important one for me which is based on Romans 12:1-2 where Paul says, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

In other posts, I have worked out the details of these verses in more detail but here I want to talk about why I use it as my main prayer that I use regularly to keep my focus right and my attitude in line with God’s will. It is particularly important to me right now while I struggle with cancer and, by God’s grace, I try to change my suffering into ministry by praying this prayer.

Most people stay in the suffering stage. They pray for healing, as they should, and they accompany the person who has cancer (for example) as they go to the hospital and bring meals to the family to make their lives easier. Beautiful. Keep it up. But the person who is suffering has an opportunity to go much deeper and transform their suffering into ministry by praying this prayer and then putting it into practice.

After all, telling God that you are willing to be a “living sacrifice” means nothing to most people but to those who are suffering for any reason whatsoever, it means everything. You are telling the Lord that you believe that your suffering has a redemptive purpose. You need to get that straight in your head first. It is not punishment although there may be an element of discipline in it to get your focus back on what matters. But God only disciplines those He loves (Hebrews 12:6 NIV) so you are in good hands.

There is nothing that can happen to me, not one cell in my body can become cancerous, without the express will of God and his will is always with a redemptive purpose. Is that supposed to make it better? Yes and no. It will still hurt, and you will still grieve but not as one without hope. If there is a redemptive purpose, it means that your witness while you are sick matters. How you handle it in faith matters. Yes, you can pray for healing without running all over the country in search of special medicines or healers. Pray for healing yourself or with your family. Have your church and your Pastor pray for your healing. That is a wonderful way to get them involved in your new ministry.

Yes, you have a new ministry now that you are suffering for the gospel. How is cancer suffering for the gospel? Good question. It may be true that not all suffering is suffering for the gospel, but it is also true that all suffering can become suffering for the gospel depending on our attitude and witness in the middle of it. That is the other side of the coin.

On the one side, we pray for healing and work towards healing by going to the doctors and taking our medicine. On the other side, we pray the prayer of a living sacrifice involved in the ministry of reconciliation. It is amazing how many people will come and talk to you and allow you to minister to them or reconcile with them just because you have cancer. God uses difficult situations to get his best work done. It is usually how he gets our attention so that we focus on what is important, like healthy relationships and reconciliation. Sometimes we even get to bring someone to Christ. How can it get better than that?

But here is the key for me. I have children from both of my marriages. Two from my first marriage who do not talk to me even though I let them know that I was dealing with cancer. I also have two from my second marriage. They are in their twenties and just getting started in their careers. But their focus is not on the things of God. I am not quite sure if their relationship with God is real and just needs to develop or whether they are just giving lip service to all of this religious stuff for our sake.

My point is that I am willing to be a “living sacrifice” for redemptive purposes especially if it means that there is a chance that my children, all of my children, see something in me as I go through this process that makes my relationship with God real to them. Their salvation is my greatest desire. God has no grandchildren. There are no guarantees. But I am willing to go through anything and be used as a “living sacrifice” for redemptive purposes even for those I don’t know or don’t care about. But I do ask God to especially work on my children (but I do that anyway).

This is my “Job Testimony” that demonstrates that God is good even in the midst of great suffering. It isn’t about the benefits of the relationship but about God, Himself, who is the focus of all my desires and efforts to please Him. This is the second prayer that I pray together with the prayer to be a “living sacrifice.” My “Job Testimony” prayer is based on what Job declared even though his wife told him to “curse God and die.”

Thank God I don’t have a wife like that, but I understand the grief that she might have been feeling after losing all of her children in those great catastrophes. But still, Job had to be strong, and even in his grief, he declared what he truly believed, not just because it was expected but because it shaped his life and was the fundamental truth that his life was based on. That is what made him a righteous man and his example has been an inspiration to millions of people for centuries after.

Job 1:20,21 NIV tells us that when Job hears that his children had been killed, he “got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

I call this my “No-Benefits Prayer”, and it goes together with my “Living Sacrifice” prayer. I do not want to fall into the trap of having a relationship with God only based on the benefits I might receive. It isn’t just about healing although I pray for it regularly, but I also tell God that if my cancer can save lives, I would rather not be healed. I would rather be a testimony of his grace and transformation.

You might say that signs and wonders and healing can also be a good witness of the truth of the gospel but there I would disagree with you. The children of Israel saw every kind of sign and wonder possible but most of them still died in the desert without ever having seen the Promised Land. Signs and Wonders can get people’s attention, but they don’t change the human heart. The ministry of reconciliation supported by real testimonies of changed lives is what the Holy Spirit uses to make a real difference in someone’s life. I know that. The Bible is clear about that and that is why I pray that God would use me as a “living sacrifice” first and foremost and only heal me when his redemptive purpose is done.

Those are the first two “special” prayers that I pray regularly, and they keep me focused on what matters most in my life and that is the salvation of those whom I love and pleasing God above all by being a witness to his goodness even when he allows my health to be taken away from me (and perhaps my life). But there are ten other prayers that I pray at specific times and for specific reasons as I continue to fulfill my life ministry.

This next prayer is called the Jabez Prayer and is based on a little know prayer by a man named Jabez in the Old Testament found in 1 Chronicles 4:10. “Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.” Some of you may recognize it from the books written about it a few years back. It is a strange prayer in some ways and surprising that God would grant it. But you have to remember the context.

This was a list of the descendants of Judah in the line of the Messiah who was to come. The man who established Bethlehem is mentioned and David would later come from this lineage. But Jabez had a disadvantage that labeled him. He had a difficult birth that was very difficult for his mother. And pain in childbirth always reminded people of the curse at the beginning of time when God declared that women would give birth in pain as part of their punishment in the rebellion against God (Genesis 3:16 NIV).

So, if a woman had a particularly painful birth, the child was considered to be cursed by God or at least someone who had brought the pain of the curse on the most important person in his life, his mother. She even called him Jabez, which means, “brought forth in pain.”

Here are a few verses before the Jabez prayer that will give you some more context. In vs. 9 it tells us that “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, “I gave birth to him in pain.” So on the one hand he was labeled by his family as a black sheep of sorts but on the other hand he was “more honorable than his brothers.” I suppose that accounts for the prayer and God’s willingness to grant his request.

So, what is the Prayer of Jabez all about? Let’s take it one step at a time. It really has only two parts to it. The first has to do with God’s blessing in terms of enlarging his territory. Perhaps he was given a bad plot of land or, because of his position in his family and his label as a troublemaker, he didn’t get what he was entitled to get. Land was an important issue for these people and perhaps because he accepted the disgrace of receiving less than what he deserved, he was considered by God to be more honorable than his brothers. I’m guessing here but something was afoot and the Bible doesn’t tell us much about the circumstances.

Still, we need to take this prayer and read it in the light of the New Testament, not the Old Testament. We are no longer concerned with getting a piece of land in Palestine. They have been fighting over it for years and besides in the New Testament our inheritance is Christ, and his focus is on redeeming lives. That is important.

So, when we say today that we want God to bless us and enlarge our territory, we aren’t talking about the American Dream and getting a bigger house. We are talking about God blessing our ministry of reconciliation and giving us a larger inheritance of changed lives, to double our talents, to bless the fruit of our labors as we suffer with Christ. What a wonderful prayer that is and worthy of praying every day of our lives for God to give us Jabez opportunities to witness to people and minister to them the grace that we have been given on their behalf.

The other part of the prayer is about how we go about the first part of the prayer. As we are involved in ministry, there may be people who will oppose us. Perhaps, and probably, even from “friendly fire” and other brothers and sisters in the church. Perhaps our focus on confession, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation gets us into trouble. That is very likely, but you can pray that God’s “hand” be with you, that God’s power be with you, that God’s protection be with you, that he would keep you from harm, and that you would be free from pain.

That last part of the prayer can also mean “keep me from causing pain,” like I caused pain to my mother in the birthing process, or perhaps like I caused pain in my past through my sin against the people I care about. Do not let me cause pain in the process of doing ministry and claiming my inheritance and gift of significance in the exercise of the ministry of reconciliation. A worthy prayer indeed. And God granted his request.

Together with the Jabez Prayer, I like to pray the “Seeking first” prayer found in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 6:33, Jesus tells us to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” What things is he talking about? Well, the practical things in life that most of us spend all of our time pursuing like food and clothes, and all of the things that make up our daily living. This sort of goes with one of the other sayings of Jesus that we all have trouble with when he tells the rich young ruler, whom he loved, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

It's just another way of saying “seek first the kingdom of heaven.”

Do not chase the American Dream but rather the Kingdom of God. It is the exact opposite of what we generally expect or do but that is the whole point after all. Ministry is done in dependence on God even for the everyday things of life. And you can’t get away with saying that this rich young ruler loved his money and so Jesus picked on him specifically because it was his weak spot. No, read your Bible. Jesus talked about the dangers of money and chasing after it over and over again. You cannot avoid it and the disciples knew that full well. They weren’t rich but they also told Jesus that they had given up everything for him, the fishing business, houses and family and even wives and children.

There is no escape from the clear teaching of Scripture on this point and, because I know it is a difficult issue in our day and age, I have made it into one of my most important prayers. Together with the Prayer of Jabez for opportunities to do ministry, I pray the Prayer of Seeking First the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and leave the rest up to God. That doesn’t mean that I am not responsible for keeping a budget and managing my resources properly.

That is a key element to my Stewardship, but stewardship has a purpose and that purpose is not to increase my net worth, or to buy a bigger house or to spend more money on the toys the world claims that we need to be happy. The very opposite is true. Spending money, time and resources sacrificially on the ministry God has given us is what Stewardship is all about and that is what I pray God will help me keep straight. This is spiritual warfare after all.

The next prayer I pray is called The Prayer of Gideon. Generally, it is meant for Pastors and Leaders who are leading teams or small groups within or without the church. I have not been in that position for a while, so I have not had occasion to pray it except on behalf of others. The Prayer of Gideon we have talked about in other posts, but it basically is a prayer that asks God to remove people from the church or from positions of leadership or influence that are not ministering from a place of spiritual authority and are difficult and unwilling to help develop an anointed church or leadership team.

Now that seems like a harsh prayer to pray but two things need to be said about it. I won’t go over the story of Gideon found in Judges 6 and 7 but rather talk about how I use that story in prayer. The first thing that needs to be said is that there are difficult people in the church who are a stumbling block in the process of becoming an anointed church. They like their power and influence and social standing and are not willing to give it up in the name of confession, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation. They fight you at every turn and all of your efforts are useless in trying to turn them to God’s way of doing things. That’s the simple truth of it.

Now, be sure to understand that we are not trying to get rid of them. Not at all. We are asking God to do so if he wills it. Frankly, he may not will it. He may be fighting for this man or this woman as hard as we are. He may be using him or her as a foil for our own sanctification and progress in righteousness. After all, he has asked us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43.48 NIV) and to return good for evil (1 Peter 3:9 NIV) and to remind us that he is an expert at turning evil into good (Romans 12:17-21 NIV). No doubt. But not always and not in every situation.

Sometimes God just needs to remove someone. They may move away to a different job in a different city. They may decide to go to a different church with less pressure to change or be committed. They may get sick and die. The point is that it is up to God not up to us. Our attitude will remain the same as we try to bring them to God’s way of thinking with much prayer and suffering for the gospel from our own brothers and sisters. That is the second thing that needed to be said. We can pray the prayer but our attitude must remain focused on the ministry of reconciliation.

That is why I pair this prayer with the Prayer of Jonah found in the Book of Jonah, one of the Minor Prophets (between Obadiah and Micah). This isn’t technically a prayer, and it certainly isn’t a positive one. I call it the Prayer of Jonah only to be consistent with all of the other prayers. What it really should be called is The Sin of Jonah. You remember the story, don’t you? Told by God to preach repentance to the great city of Ninevah, the capital of Assyria at that time and the greatest threat to peace in Israel. These were Gentiles after all, and the enemies of God. What in the world was God up to?

Jonah decides to run away instead of fulfilling this dangerous and disgusting mission he has been given but a storm threatens his ship, he is thrown overboard and swallowed by a great fish and vomited up onto the shores of Ninevah. There is no escaping God’s will whether we like it or not. He is trying to teach Israel a lesson and some humility at a time when they are in relative peace, and they think that God will spare them and destroy the evil empire of Assyria. And let there be no doubt, this was an evil empire. Their barbarism and bloodshed are legendary even into modern times.

Not only is Jonah told to preach repentance to his enemies, but he is also told beforehand that they would repent. You can imagine his reluctance to do anything too ambitious in his preaching. There was probably no fire or passion, no rhetoric or argumentation, just the basics. Perhaps he simply walked through the streets, speaking in a monotone voice that Ninevah had to repent, or the wrath of God would come upon them. The fact that he was a Jew preaching in the most powerful city at that time might have impressed some people, but I doubt it. The truth is that the conviction of God came upon the people anyway, and they repented.

But by this time, Jonah had done his job and was waiting outside the city walls for God’s wrath to come upon the city. He was convinced that these enemies of God (and Israel) deserved nothing more than the wrath of God for their godless ways. He was a safe distance away and sitting under a nice large fern that was giving him some shade but then the plant started to wither, and Jonah started to complain to God. Listen to what God had to say about Jonah’s attitude (and the attitude of most of Israel as well) in Jonah 4:9-11 NIV.

“But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”

“I do,” he said, “I am angry enough to die.”

But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”

And that’s how the story ends.

The answer, as you know, is yes, he should be concerned about people outside of his chosen nation. He repeats it regularly throughout the Old Testament and in Christ, he died on the cross to make it happen for everyone on earth no matter who they are. The Israelites had already started to believe that God’s blessings were for them and that His wrath was for all the other nations of the world. They had forgotten that they were chosen originally to become a blessing to the nations (Genesis 12:3 NIV) and every family on earth.

So, the Prayer of Gideon may be necessary as a severe mercy at times, but it is balanced by the fact that our job is to preach repentance with conviction and passion and not with a callous attitude like that of Jonah. The person (or persons) may not repent, and God may have to deal with them harshly (or not) but our job is to work towards an anointed church preaching repentance and praying for an open door of opportunity for ministry. The rest is up to God.

Learning to pray these first six prayers is a good start. In my next post, I will discuss the final six prayers that are essential for the transition to an anointed church ministry.