Opening in Prayer

Priscilla and Grandma hands

To anybody else this photo probably wouldn’t mean anything. No one would pay a lot of money or give large amounts of their attention to it. It wouldn’t be to them the personal treasure it is to me. Because to them, it’d be just a photo. A random image.

Of two hands.

One of the hands, as you see, is wrinkled and worn. Visibly older. A couple of the nails are a bit bruised and tattered. There’s no jewelry to adorn any finger. And no real attempt at cosmetic touches. It’s just plain. Simple. Strong and storied, yet nobly, humbly feminine.

The second hand in the picture, lying just overtop the fingers of the first, is much younger and smoother. Brown—same color as the other, though with a skin texture that’s still evenly composed and supple. Nails fairly neat and a tad more youthful. A ring on the fourth finger. Together, they’re a quick portrait in chronological contrast.

But what I really love about this picture is what’s lying beneath these two hands. That old spiral notebook. Grocery-store quality. A dollar forty-nine, plus tax, on sale. No expensive leather binding or intricately designed, acid-free paper. Just a fourth-grade composition book with wide-ruled, lined sheets and a plastic-coated cover.

And yet within those pages, bound by thin, metal rings slightly mashed out of shape by the pressure of frequent use, are the vast treasures of a living legacy.

These two hands—older and younger—belong to a grandmother and her granddaughter. And this spiral-bound filing cabinet contains a grandmother’s prayer requests—written out, printed off, and prayed over, during her daily appointment with Jesus. She meets with Him the way she’d meet with any important friend—faithfully, personally, punctually. And in those early morning moments, she opens up this book of prayer and vocalizes her needs to Him, as well as the needs of others—requests she’s been quietly gathering amid her daily dealings.

These two women, though separated by several decades of life experiences, go out together occasionally on little afternoon dates. And since a ninety-five-year-old metabolism can afford to indulge a predilection for McDonald’s French fries and vanilla milk shakes, that’s their usual outing. They drive through for a batch of that salty-sweet, hot-and-cold combination, then they meander random neighborhood streets, windows down, while the lip-smacking passenger munches to her heart’s delight. But it’s also in these moments, between her grandmother’s swallows, when this grown grandchild seeks to absorb the treasured wisdom from nearly a century of holy living.

Recently on one of these fast-food sprees, when the subject of prayer came up, the younger asked the older why she wrote down her prayers in a notebook like that. Then she waited, even pushing the “record” button on her iPhone, hoping not to miss a word of what she knew would be a long, deeply spiritual answer—one she’d never want to forget and could pass down in her grandmother’s own voice for generations to come.

They glanced at each other. No one spoke for a few moments. Another french fry. Long gulp of milk shake. Then came these understated words:

“So I won’t forget.”

Hmmh. And there you have it. The message of this whole book in one simple phrase. Straight from the tender lips of a godly grandma. You write out your prayers so you “won’t forget” . . .

Through intentional, deliberate, strategic prayer, you grab hold of Jesus and of everything He’s already done on your behalf. It’s how you tap into the power of heaven and watch it reverberate in your experiences. It’s a key part of your offensive weaponry against a cunning foe who prowls around and watches for your weaknesses, your vulnerable places, for any opportunity to destroy you. In prayer you gain your strength—the power to gird yourself with armor that extinguishes every weapon your enemy wields.

Paul the apostle famously said it like this:

Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able
to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.
(Eph. 6:11 nlt)

There’s that word again. Strategies. Schemes and deceptive plots being concocted for your demise by a very real enemy who is always primed to make his next move. He works overtime to destroy the relationships and circumstances you want to preserve. He laughs at your attempts to fix your own issues with timely words and hard work—tactics that might affect matters for a moment but can’t begin to touch his underhanded, cunning efforts down where the root issues lie, or up in those spiritual “heavenly places” where such physical weapons were never meant to work. “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies—”

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. But we don’t stop there. Because neither does Paul in his description of our spiritual armor in Ephesians 6—

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 . . . (vv. 18–19 nlt)

There it is. The fuel that drives everything. Prayer. We pray till our hands are worn and wrinkled. We pray until our granddaughters are old enough to understand and learn and copy our example. We pray until they can one day place their hands across ours, gently rubbing our aging skin, and we smile because now they’ll never forget the things we had the good sense to record in writing for their generation. They will look back on our legacies and know we stood strong, fought the good fight, and finished a race in which we would not even think about letting the enemy have his way in our lives or in the lives of those we love.

We pray because our own solutions don’t work and because prayer deploys, activates, and fortifies us against the attacks of the enemy. We pray because we’re serious about taking back the ground he has sought to take from us.

That’s what we do. And I hope it’s what you do—or what you’ve come here to be renewed in doing. But make no mistake, this enemy will seek to discourage you from doing it. Dissuade you. Disarm you by putting a distaste for prayer in your mouth. He wants to see you passionless, powerless, and prayerless. Quiet. 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. Tired and overwhelmed. Inching forward but mostly backward. Trying to figure out why the hope and enthusiasm you feel in church doesn’t follow you to the four walls you live within.

And if I were your enemy, that’s exactly what I’d want. I’d want to make you devalue the most potent weapons in your arsenal. I’d strategize against you, using carefully calculated methods to disorient and defeat you.

In fact, this approach makes so much devilish sense that it’s exactly what the devil does do—to you, in real life—all under the umbrella of deception. He comes at you to . . . well, don’t just listen to me; hear it from the loud voices who responded when I polled a large cross section of women, asking them to tell me the primary ways the enemy attacks them. After boiling down all their answers into the most common categories of responses, I ended up with what I believe to be a top ten of his favorite strategies. Here’s where he seems to direct them against you the hardest:

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Strategy 1—Against Your Passion

He seeks to dim your whole desire for prayer, dull your interest in spiritual things, and downplay the potency of your most strategic weapons (Eph. 6:10–20).

Strategy 2—Against Your Focus

He disguises himself and manipulates your perspective so you end up focusing on the wrong culprit, directing your weapons at the wrong enemy (2 Cor. 11:14).

Strategy 3—Against Your Identity

He magnifies your insecurities, leading you to doubt what God says about you and to disregard what He’s given you (Eph. 1:17–19).

Strategy 4—Against Your Family

He wants to disintegrate your family, dividing your home, rendering it chaotic, restless, and unfruitful (Gen. 3:1–7).

Strategy 5—Against Your Confidence

He constantly reminds you of your past mistakes and bad choices, hoping to convince you that you’re under God’s judgment rather than under the blood (Rev. 12:10).

Strategy 6—Against Your Calling

He amplifies fear, worry, and anxiety until they’re the loudest voices in your head, causing you to deem the adventure of following God too risky to attempt (Josh. 14:8).

Strategy 7—Against Your Purity

He tries to tempt you toward certain sins, convincing you that you can tolerate them without risking consequence, knowing they’ll only wedge distance between you and God (Isa. 59:1–2).

Strategy 8—Against Your Rest and Contentment

He hopes to overload your life and schedule, pressuring you to constantly push beyond your limits, never feeling permission to say no (Deut. 5:15).

Strategy 9—Against Your Heart

He uses every opportunity to keep old wounds fresh in mind, knowing that anger and hurt and bitterness and unforgiveness will continue to roll the damage forward (Heb. 12:15).

Strategy 10—Against Your Relationships

He creates disruption and disunity within your circle of friends and within the shared community of the body of Christ (1 Tim. 2:8).

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And that’s just ten of ’em—ten of the most usual ways he strategizes against the strength of God’s woman.

Well, two can play at that game. And with God on our side taking the lead in setting our own strategy plans, we’re already in the vast majority. But we must still be diligent and intentional. We must recognize and cry out against the highly personalized attacks being thrown in our direction. No, there’s no need to fear, but we’d better be on our guard. And we’d better not ever forget—like the grandmother in the picture says—to keep praying with purpose and precision, the way she prays for people like her granddaughter.

A granddaughter who just happens to be . . .

Me.

My name is written in that book of hers. Has been for decades. She’s prayed for me since before I was born, asking God to gird and strengthen, to guide and sustain.

That was back when she, like me, once wore a wedding ring on one of those precious fingers, before her husband of more than fifty years, my grandfather, went ahead of her into heaven. But it occurs to me, as I look back at this photograph, that the wedding ring on my hand—and the strong, happy, trial-tested marriage it represents—is not attributable to my own abilities and fine behavior as much as it’s a direct result of my name being in her book and of her firm resolve to fight for me. For my husband. For our family.

My grandmother, Annie Eleen Cannings—the woman to whom I’ve dedicated this book—has gone to war for me. On her knees. In prayer.

Fervent prayer.

And I’ve decided I want to follow her there.

So with my grandmother’s keen instructions in tow, and with the truth of God’s Word as my anchor on ultimate truth and reality, I’ve started the well-worn, proven discipline of writing down my prayers. I began by considering my most pressing dilemmas—the ones raging in my own heart, my family, my finances, my health, my ministry—and then started writing down my own battle plans for dealing with them, based on the truths of Scripture. I resolved to stop using physical means to fight battles that require spiritual remedies, using instead the power of prayer to do what it’s always been designed to do.

I’m certainly not perfect at it, but I’m trying to grow.

They’re posted in my closet now. My prayers, I mean. Seriously. Some are on full sheets of lined paper. Others are on little slivers of computer paper, ripped away after only a sentence or two. Or even just a word or two. But big or small, I’ve dated them and posted them all. And now, there they sit, taped right above a row of hooks in the closet where I see them every time I get dressed.

That way, I won’t forget.

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.

That’s what this book is all about. From my grandmother’s heart to yours. Leading you to deliberately and thoughtfully write down your prayer strategies—tearing them right out of this book if you like—then posting them in a strategic place where you can pray them regularly and consistently.

Into Prayer

Couple of things to mention here, though, before we start to develop some intentional strategies of devil-busting prayer, designed to counteract his specific strategies against us. Whenever the conversation of demonic activity comes up in a book like this, most people scatter to one of two extremes. Either they overestimate Satan’s influence and power, living with an inflated, erroneous perspective of his abilities. Or they underestimate him. They don’t assign him any credit at all for the difficulties he’s stirring up beneath the surface of their lives. One extreme leaves you saddled with undue fear and anxiety; the other just makes you stupid—(too blunt to say it like that? sorry)—unaware and completely open to every single attack.

Which of these categories do you fall into or lean toward? Either?

Let’s be clear, no matter which way you gravitate, Satan is not God. And he is not God’s counterpart or peer. They’re not even on the same playing field. His influence, authority, and power don’t even touch the fringe of what our Lord is capable of doing. Read ahead to Revelation 19 and 20 sometime, the so-called titanic clash of end-time foes in what’s commonly known as the battle of Armageddon. Know what it really is? More like the devil and his demons getting all dressed up with no place to go. It’s over before it even starts. The only thing that makes it a war is that he becomes a prisoner of war. Satan is nothing but a copycat, trying desperately to convince you he’s more powerful than he actually is. Because remember: he does have limitations—boundaries he cannot cross no matter how much he desires or how hard he tries. For instance . . .

And last, but certainly not least . . .

So even though he’s been given temporary clearance to strategize and antagonize, we don’t need to pray from a position of fear or weakness against him. Quite the opposite. 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. And we can expect to prevail. But we can’t expect to experience this power unless we’re serious about joining the battle in prayer.

All right, then—before we get going—here are just a few bits and pieces of framework that might help you in getting started. We’ll be using these reminders throughout to help the prayers you write stay anchored and strong:

Praying like this, you can expect God to respond in accordance with His own sovereign, eternal will and His boundless love for you. Or as someone more clever than I has said . . .

Prayer

Releases

All

Your

Eternal

Resources

I like that.

But if you’re still uneasy about it all, if you’re not sure you’ll know how to get the hang of this . . . no worries. With the next page you turn, you’re entering the prayer strategy zone. And I guarantee you, God’s Spirit is going to show you exactly how to get started.

Speaking of which . . . why don’t we do just that: get started.

If you’ve had it, then let’s do it.

Let’s get after it.

Let’s pray.1

1Acrostic used on previous page: Richard A. Burr, Developing Your Secret Closet of Prayer (Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, 2008), 44.