Prayer! How often do I pray for my husband? Is it ok to let go and let God? These thoughts have often ran laps through my mind as I have wrestled with knowing how to pray for my husband while resting in God. Prayer needs to come from a place of surrender and rest. Rest does not mean that you sit back on the sofa with your feet propped up on the coffee table. On the contrary, rest is a position of absolute trust in God’s character and faithfulness.
I struggle with rest. Why? Simple. I struggle to trust. This is not something I’m proud of but this is my reality. I trust and mistrust people all at the same time. This filters into my relationship with God. To rest in God means that I have to trust His plans, promises and characters yet I cannot see him with my physical eyes or touch him with my actual hands. Rest. 
Trusting God comes down to two things: faith and a encounter with God. Of course, I have both. The challenge comes when I am lacking in those encounters of certain aspects of God’s character. In those places, God asks me to pray from a place of rest. Trusting him becomes harder than I often want to admit. This is when Holy Spirit comes in to take my hand and lead me to that place of rest and trust.
In the past three years, God has been teaching me that my prayer life does not have to cover every person I come across or every situation for that matter. My prayer life needs to encompass that which he lays on my heart to pray into. He has shown me that the world is his responsibility to take care of not mine and that the body of Christ is large enough to handle those areas that are not mine to work into or sow with prayer.
This brings my heart much relief and at the same time a sense of loss. What do I do now? Rest. Worship. Pray. Prayer is so much more than offering petitions to God or engaging in a monologue. On the contrary, prayer is a beautiful dialogue between God and man. Its the place of communing with God out of a place of vulnerability, brokenness and wholeness. In the place of prayer, God reveals his heart as one of compassion, empathy, strength, grace, understanding and love.
With this revelation, prayer stops being a task that requires my sweat and blood. Instead, I find myself sitting with the lover of my soul bringing my heart’s concerns and treasures before him. I begin to ask him to show me his perspective, his heart and his intentions.Before long, I find myself standing with my feet on top of his, my hands in his hands as I let him do the walking, the moving. I get to join in on what he is doing, hear what he is saying and watch his face transform with the myriad of emotions he encounters as He speaks, listens, and acts.
Praying from this place of rest brings a fresh joy and delight into the act of intercession and spiritual warfare. Partnering with God is not supposed to be heavy or burdensome. It’s fun, adventurous and exciting. As you pray, fire falls over those situations or people that you are praying for. The fire and presence of God falls releasing a sweet fragrance to heaven.
Command Aaron and his son’s saying, “This is the law for the burnt offering: the burnt offering itself shall remain on the hearth on the altar all night until the morning and the fir on the altar is to be kept burning on it….Fire shall be kept burning continually on the altar ; it is not to go out.” Leviticus 6:9,13
I love this Scripture. As we pray, w
e bring to God our treasures, our passions, our family, community and situations. We lay them all down before him as an act of surrender. Our prayers fall as fire emitting a sweet fragrance. Our family, community, friends and situations become covered in the fire and presence of God (whether they know it or not is irrelevant). Prayer looks like something in the natural and supernatural. In the supernatural it is fire and incense. In the natural it may be dance, worship, prophetic acts, travailing, weeping, shouts of joy, prophetic declarations, quoting Scripture, and more.
The power in prayer is undeniable. As you pray, the winds of the Holy Spirit begin to blow, fanning those prayers into a roaring fire. The presence of God surrounds you leading you into an encounter with the heart and nature of God in ways that you’ve never experience. Holy Spirit’s winds continue to blow fanning the fire within your own spirit.
As God shows you that his work is done, he has finished for today, you can step off his feet to sit with him by the river of life as he refreshes your soul with living waters. His answers may not be immediate but they are always on time. His word always accomplishes that which he set it out to do because He is faithful.
This is praying from a place of rest. Beautiful, effective, and powerful. In this place, I find that I am able to trust God more easily. My faith in him rises fifty levels. I know that I can trust him. Praying as he shows you is part of the good works he created you for. Anything else becomes dead works – heavy, lifeless, and draining.
Today, I want to pray this over you:
Holy Spirit, come. Come and fill this person today with your presence. I speak life into you today. I release hope into your spirit. Thank you Jesus for anointing this person today with new anointing. Anoint their eyes, ears, and mind as you increase their discernment. I thank you that they will see with your eyes, hear your heart, and enter into your rest.
Papa God, I ask for strength. I bless their prayer life and declare it effective, powerful and full of the fire of God. I declare over you a quickening into answered prayers. Papa, would you draw this beautiful person into deep encounters with your love and your presence. I speak a freshness over them today, increased faith, and unshakeable trust. I thank you that you seal this person in the blood of Jesus. Thank you for who they are and what they carry. Bless them and their families today. In Jesus name, Amen.
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