How to pray the Promises of God

Prayer Tool: Petition

What?Link to this section

Praying God’s promises over our lives and situations is a powerful thing to do. Thisprayer tool will help you to pray God’s promises in your life.

Why?Link to this section

“It is grand praying when our mouth is full of God’s Word, for there is no word that can prevail with him like his own.” — Charles Spurgeon

Bible ReferenceLink to this section

“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.” — 2 Corinthians 1:20

A quick introduction to the Promises of GodLink to this section

The Bible is clear that ‘without faith it is impossible to please God’ (Heb 11:6), yet also full of stories revealing just how difficult it is to live by faith in the midst of our fallen and rebellious world. Nevertheless, the life of faith is what we are called to.

Faith in this context only grows and strengthens within us through prayer. And therefore, prayerful meditation on and declaration of the promises of God over our lives is our primary method for building a life of faith.

Like a daily workout in the gym building our physical muscles gradually, so our faith will only grow through a daily habit of prayerful meditation on God’s promises over our lives.

Why can we trust in these promises?

There are many promises of God that are simply ours because of who God is. These promises are timeless truths built on the absolute reality that God is a covenant-keeping and unchanging Father of immense goodness. The word of the Lord in Balaam’s mouth declared:

“God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?” — Numbers 23:19

God is both Promise-Maker and Promise-Keeper. We see many signs of this in theOld Testament. God will never leave His people, nor forget His covenant towards them.

We can say yes to God’s good purposes in our lives because ‘every spiritual blessing in the Heavenly realms’ (Ephesians 1:3) has become ours in Christ. This draws us into the Biblical theme of inheritance. God has a ‘promised land’ for us to live in, an inheritance and destiny in Christ for us to access that is immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine.

The journey into our destiny however can only be accessed through faith, and faith can only be strengthened in the promises of God, and these promises can only beknown and appropriated to our lives in the place of prayer. Put simply: prayer is the process through which the promise is discerned, carried and eventually fulfilled.

Do it: How to pray the promises of GodLink to this section

Firstly, it’s important that we remember which promises of God are conditional –which require a premise of obedience from us to fully unlock the reality of that promise on our lives.

Secondly, it might be helpful to think of the promises of God in two distinct yet complimentary ways:

Timeless Truths

These promises could be described as general promises that help to saturate your spirit and mind in a God-immersed reality for your life.

These promises are most likely associated with the fidelity of God’s character, Hiscovenantal love and His commitment towards us in a myriad of ways, which we can pray over our lives regardless of the season of life you find yourself in.

The Bible contains promises for provision (Luke 12:22 – 32), for protection (Psalm 91),of new creation (2 Cor 5:17), of His unfailing love (Lam 3:22 – 23), for health (Psalm 103:1 – 3) of His non-forsaking presence (Heb 13:5).

The result of this will be a stirring of faith, an anchoring of our souls in the character of God, a sureness about our sonship, and a renewal of our minds onto a sanctified imagination. These promises are our rightful inheritance through the work of Jesus.

Situational or Seasonal Promises

God also likes to give us more specific promises for particular areas of our lives, people we are praying for, or seasons we are moving through.

Sometimes as we are seeking God for His direction in our lives, or when we are interceding for a specific child, friend or even city, He grants us an ‘epiphany-like’ moment. This is where God gives us a window into what He sees for our lives, a person we are praying for, or a particular situation. This can come in word, a picture,an inner sense or a scripture and should result in giving us a preferred future, ‘a vision over visibility.’

The point is God wants us to see something we can’t currently see in the natural and then pray it through.

This is the promise we cling to, sometimes by our broken fingernails when reality is screaming in our faces the complete opposite. This is contending for the promise, like Abraham who despite the barrenness of his wife and the disqualification of hisage, prayed and believed for the promise of a son: “being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised” — Romans 4:21