24/7 Prayer

Spending time in God’s presence can be a revitalizing and transforming experience. You can:

• Praise God and give Him thanks.

• Talk to God about what’s on your heart.

• Ask God to meet your own needs and those of others.

• Find new insights through reading the Bible or another inspirational book.

• Keep silent and listen for what God is saying to you.

1. Choose a small place in your home that’s away from a lot of activity – maybe a chair in the corner of a bedroom. That can be the place you or other people in your family can go to spend time with God. You can encourage your children to spend time there as well.

2. Have a small table or crate to hold items that are special to you – maybe something from nature, a cross, a Bible, a hymn book or another inspirational book. You might want to light a candle as you pray. If you received a “care box” you will find a candle to use and a cross to hold.

3. Bring a journal or something else to write with. You may want to use your smart phone or laptop to connect to the RefreshRestoreRenew website so you can leave your thoughts and prayer requests for others who will be praying over the course of the week.

4. There will be prayer resources on the website and in your “care box” if you asked for that.

We Face a Defeated Foe

I can conquer whatever comes because He has already conquered. Everything I meet, Christ has already met. When temptation, sin, difficulty, opposition, misunderstanding, criticism, fear, resentment, inferiority, pride, loneliness -- yes, when anything comes upon me to bully me, I ask that thing to bend its neck. When it does so, I exclaim with joy: "There I told you so! There is the footprint of the Son of God upon your neck! He has conquered you. I'm in Him and I conquer in His conquering."

EVERYTHING I face is a defeated foe – I'm dealing with the already conquered. I do not have to conquer by struggling, trying – I simply take my stand by surrender to Him. I am therefore in Him. Everything there is in Him is in me – in me by appropriation and receptivity. No trying, just trusting; no agonizing, just appropriation; no resistance, just receptivity.

Jesus said, "In me, you have peace. In the world, you have tribulation, but be of good cheer -- I have overcome the world." John 16:33

I have peace simply by being in You, dear Lord. Fully surrendered, I am strong in Your strength, pure in Your purity, loving in Your love and victorious in Your victory.

From In Christ, by E. Stanley Jones

The Ring of Peace

Adapted from “How to Pray When Life Hurts” by Roy Lawrence

with quotations from E. Stanley Jones

1. Think of the presence of Christ. Remember Christ’s promises: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Even if you are alone, He is still with you. You have His word – “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” As the Scottish missionary David Livingstone said, “This is the word of a gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honor, and there’s an end on’t!”

2. So there you are you and Jesus. What is it like to be in His presence? He is not changed. He is “the same yesterday and today and forever.” He is the same Jesus who went about preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all kinds of sickness and disease among the people. He is the same Jesus who promised His disciples: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” Be available to Him; be open to Him as Savior and Lord. Don’t fight Him, but trust Him. Be in the healing peace of God which Jesus came to bring to us. You may want to pray:

“Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I’m truly sorry for the wrongs I have done, but I also know that You love me and gave Yourself for me. You offer to come into my life if I will let You in. You offer healing for the sins and hurts of my soul. You offer to feed me with Your own truth. Gratefully I accept Your offer to be my Savior, Lord and Friend. I ask for forgiveness. I put my trust in You and want You at work in me, healing me, feeding me, living in me. Use my life in Your service. Thank You for all You are going to do in me. Amen.”

3. Claim the Son’s promise of the Father’s peace. The peace of God is not something precarious which we have to strive hard to hold and keep. It will not slip away, like a piece of slippery soap in the bathtub. No, quite the opposite. “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus.”

We do not keep the peace of God. The peace of God keeps us. Imagine yourself surrounded by the ring of God’s peace. There is no need to strive. Just rest in the knowledge that it is so.

Breathe in God’s peace, breathe out God’s calm.

Breathe in God’s truth, breathe out God’s mercy.

Breathe in God’s power, breathe out God’s victory.

Breathe in God’s love, breathe out His grace.

Breathe in God’s joy, breathe out God’s blessing.

Breathe in God’s strength, breathe out God’s healing.

4. The peace of God is not a weak, passive experience. It is not the mere absence of turmoil. It is strong and active and vibrant with life. It is an attribute of God himself. The peace of God is one with the power of God and the love of God and the joy of God. To be within God’s ring of peace is to be in contact with God’s power and love and joy. It is a place of creativity, a place of healing.

5. There is not need to do anything. Just “go flop” before the Lord. Acknowledge his peace. Enjoy his peace. Let his peace flow around you. Let his peace flow into you – warm, strong and life-giving.

There is no hurry. You can rest in this place of healing as long as you choose to do so. You can actually feel the peace of God entering into every part of your mind, every part of your body, the very depths of your spirit. You can know that sin and tension and sickness must retreat before it.

6. Once within the ring of peace, we can offer effective healing prayer without strain or drain. Both we and the people we pray for should feel the benefit.

So now, picture your family within the ring of peace. Lift up each member into that peace.

“I thank You God, that it’s Your will that my home should be a place of Your Peace and that that Peace should undergird all the relationships of our family life.”

Within the ring of peace we thank God for this, and let His Will flow through our prayer.

7. Bring into the ring of peace your illness or troubles. Do not concentrate on the illness or the trouble. Think of yourself and each of your loved ones as someone created and loved by God, a person for whom God’s will is wholeness. Let your prayer reinforce God’s will as you picture yourself and anyone else for whom you are praying within the ring of peace. Again, do not strive or worry or tense up. Let God’s own peace do God’s own work.

As E. Stanley Jones says:

We are inwardly fashioned for faith, not for fear. Fear is not our native land; faith is. We are so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil. We live better by faith and confidence than by fear, doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry, we are gasping for breath–these are not our native air. But in faith and confidence, we breathe freely–these are our native air. A John Hopkins University doctor says, ‘We do not know why it is that worriers die sooner than the non- worriers, but that is a fact.’ But I, who am simple of mind, think I know; We are inwardly constructed in nerve and tissue, brain cell and soul, for faith and not for fear. God made us that way. When we live by worry, we live against reality.

8. Imagine the ring of peace growing larger and larger. After picturing our individual selves within the ring of God’s peace, encircle your church family, our Redwood Christian Ashram family, your colleagues, your friends and family – within that same ring of peace. You can say

“We thank You God for each other. We thank You, God, for Yourself in our midst. We thank You God that Your presence and Your peace are not passive. We thank You that Your Peace is actively at work in this moment, full of purpose and power. We offer our prayers to You within Your Holy and Healing Will. We offer ourselves as channels of that Will for peace and wholeness.”

9. Picture the ring of God’s peace around your neighborhood, then around our country, then encircling our world, and finally surrounding the whole universe, known and unknown.

“Your Holy and Healing Will be done. We thank You God that we can offer these prayers with confidence. We praise You that You are our Almighty and Eternal God and that Your Will must ultimately triumph, Your Peace must prevail, Your kingdom will come, because You are God. We offer our prayers not with anxiety, but with calm expectancy!”