Prayer

Do you sometimes find it hard to be honest with God regarding the fertility problems you face? I know that I do at times. Perhaps sometimes it just feels easier to give God my best spiritual performance by telling him what I think he wants to hear instead. Perhaps a part of me still thinks my healing is based on my goodness or how well I weather the challenge.

If mountains of stress, worry, or fear dominate the landscape of your life, you’re not alone.

Grief is something that we all are going to experience during this lifetime. Let's look at how we can lift up a prayer for grief for ourselves and others who are going through a period of pain.

God will get you through, bring you people who can support you, and help you to overcome any addiction. Here are seven prayers to help you deal with addictions in your life.

Here are 25 prayers that will fit any mealtime situation, from formal family dinners, to meals on the go at the neighborhood drive-thru:

God is big enough to move any mountain in my life—including my health! Here are four ways to pray if health is a challenge for you as well.

As our children go back to school, we throw ourselves into preparations. Instructions from teachers send us scurrying for supplies, including everything from notebooks to calculators to tissues. We shop for new school clothing, shoes, backpacks, and more. For those who don’t buy lunches at school, we stock the pantry with nutritious, easy-to-pack foods. With older students, we analyze class schedules to make sure our kids have the courses they’ll need for their next steps in life.By now, most of us have already posted first-day-of-school pictures on social media. We breathe a sigh of relief as transportation snafus finally resolve. The days fall back into routine after summer’s freedom. But have our preparations been enough?When we send our children to school, we allow others to influence them. We all can remember that special teacher who inspired and motivated us. Most of us also recall others, perhaps a coach or a bully, who devastated our self-image. The content of the curriculum itself shapes young minds and hearts. There’s no doubt our kids will encounter material that is contrary to God’s holiness. Despite our best efforts to shield them from the world, our children’s peers will expose them to all forms of ungodliness. And behind all those primary concerns, we wonder if the recent spate of mass shootings could make its way to our hometown.These transitional days back to school mark a critical need to lay a foundation of prayer for our children. Our best resource for prayer is the Bible because it contains God’s will for us. Meditate on the following verses and ten prayers for the school year. As you pray, include the names of your children to make them personal.Photo credit: ©Getty Images/SkynesherHere Are 10 Prayers for the School Year:

Are you facing a difficult disease, illness or malady but don't know what to pray? If you feel scared, alone, unsure of the future, or don't understand how healing works, pray these words in faith today!

“Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous; you surround them with your favor as with a shield” (Psalm 5:12).Most of us have been on the receiving end of God’s kindness at one time or another. And we can give powerful testimonies of His goodness to us, whether the gifts we’ve gotten have been more material, emotional or spiritual in nature.For me, God’s blessings have come in many different forms. But I didn’t always recognize them as His handiwork. I confess that early on in my Christian walk, I often mistook His provision as coincidence. But as I grew in understanding, I realized just how much He provided for me each day, in big and small ways.Then I began to learn that God actually wanted to hear my prayers for blessings. I was amazed and thrilled that I could ask the Lord for anything. But, I soon saw that learning how to lift up requests in a way that would please Him, and seeking things that He would want to give me, were both crucial parts of the process.Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Aaron Amat

Share these night prayers for evening bedtime with your children, spouse and friends so they too can fall asleep feeling blessed and thankful. God is wanting and waiting to give you peace and comfort at night time.

Is your heart troubled? Are you feeling like the psalmist, who asked his own soul, "Why are you in despair? And why have you become disturbed within me?" One of the hardest parts of knowing peace is understanding how it has nothing to do with control. If you're having trouble with trust or finding the words to pray above the howling of the scary storms, feel free to offer up these words to the Lord now!

In memory of tragedy, we often ask where God is in all of it. Everchanging and Almighty, God certainly has the power to stop these things from happening. How can the same people God specifically created to love become conduits of pure evil?

If you lost someone on 9/11 or you feel deep sadness over the events, a great thing you can do is to offer up a few prayers for America this year on the anniversary of 9/11. Here are five prayers for America on 9/11.

Jesus has revealed our sins and has forgiven every one of them. How very humbling. Pray for your non-believing family and friends to see how He has changed you! Good Lord willing, God will draw them to Himself through our Lord Jesus (John 6:44).

There is nothing quite like the endless concerns and built-up worry that comes from being a momma. Now that my oldest is driving, my anxious heart has hit a whole new level, and many days, it comes with some rather big emotions. Just yesterday, my daughter came to me asking if I would put the school sticker on her car to be able to park in the student parking lot. I could have sworn she asked me that in her sweet little 5-year-old voice. As I managed to clumsily add that sticker to her windshield in the blazing Texas heat, flashbacks and memories began to flood my mind. Then, that all too familiar and uncomfortable feeling came over me, bringing on misty eyes and a tinge of terror. Two more years until she’s off to college, it loudly declared, as if it were audible! Before I knew it, I had punctured a tiny hole in that parking lot sticker and quickly became a hot mess, literally and figuratively. Ugh.Oh my, there is so much to worry about, isn’t there? The questions, decisions, and concerns are real and valid. It’s so easy to get triggered by things out of our control and bend to fear rather than lean into peace. As you may well know, finding peace as a mom is hard enough, but when anxiety wants to rear its ugly head, acquiring peace seems absolutely impossible.So, today, I invite you to pause with me and ask God into the broken and messy parts of your anxious heart. Let’s seek Him together as we find Scriptures that back up His many promises to be with us and to go before us while reaching out through our heartfelt prayers to seek peace.

This Labor Day, let's remember the power of prayer over our work. Whether you have a job you love, are facing difficulties in the workplace, or are experiencing job loss, God has a plan and purpose for this season in your life.Prayer can significantly impact the work that we do and the way we see it. Yet in our day-to-day prayers, we often exclude the needs we encounter at work. For whatever reasons, our work and workplaces do not enter our minds as we pray. As a result, we may not experience the fullness of what God wants for us when we’re at work. When we start praying for our work, we recognize that God is active in all we do, not just our “personal” or “spiritual” lives. And this is transformative. Yet prayer doesn’t change God’s heart toward our work as much as it changes ours. And when we begin to see our work the way God sees it, we experience the power of prayer and of God’s grace.Use these prayers on Labor Day and all days to remember that God designed work to be fulfilling and to bring Him honor!(excerpt provided by NIV Faith and Work Bible)

Through prayer, the enemy’s plans are intercepted; the principalities and authorities are defeated; the power and provision of God flow into the lives of His people. It’s the conduit through which God’s power is released, and His will is brought to earth as it is in heaven.

There is nothing sweeter than the sights, sounds, and smells that come in with the dawn of a new day, bringing excitement and maybe even a pep in your step as you set forth to conquer all the things that lay before you.That is, unless you are anything like me, and those blazing sun rays stream in and feel more like a nuisance disrupting your precious sleep rather than a welcoming salutation. Just five more minutes…please!As you well know, each new day will bear its own unique set of triumphs and challenges, bringing on whimsical highs and debilitating lows. You may range from joyfully bouncing out of bed one day to barely having the energy to get up the next.Mornings can be sweet and lazy as your spouse brings you in a cup of coffee or utterly hectic as you stumble into the kitchen to find your toddler having a meltdown on the floor. Ugh.So, whether you feel invigorated about the day ahead or overwhelmed by the tasks that it brings, the beauty about it is this — we have the ability to share our heart and greet our faithful Father, every single morning!Implementing daily prayer as part of your morning routine will not only posture your heart with gratitude, but when we pause and take a moment to pray, it sets the tone for the rest of the day.Psalms 118:24 tells us that every day is a gift. However, if I were being completely honest, as a mom trying to get two teens up and ready for school, packing lunches, and trying to get everyone out the door by 7:30, I don’t always make time to pray, much less see my morning as a precious gift. Maybe you struggle with this, too?Thankfully, we serve a loving God who knew we would struggle to meet with Him in the mornings. This is why Scripture alludes to the value and importance of seeking God when we first awake on multiple occasions.We see it most often in the poetic Book of Psalms as David opens up his heart, rejoicing, praising, and giving thanks, all while seeking wisdom and crying out in anguish in his morning prayers. I'm pretty sure David had some rather rough mornings, yet he still met with God!So, maybe we learn from him and follow his clumsy, yet heartfelt example. The truth is, there is no need to overcomplicate or perfect our prayers. It’s more about being intentional and purposeful with our prayers, going to God with our praise and vulnerability.Not sure where to start? Well, please feel free to use the prompting prayers below as a guideline or base, and then personalize them to fit your needs as you bring your heart before the Lord. Each prayer will have a Psalm and a question or reflection as you open up your heart to God.Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/Charday Penn

When the ache of the unknown looms in front us as we place our lives in the hands of surgeons, prayer gives peace to our hearts and physically tired bodies.