I always begin my daily prayer times with praise. Jesus is so worthy and deserving of our thanksgiving and praise for all that he has done for us. Therefore, we should enter the gates of prayer with thanksgiving and the courts of his presense with praise.
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good. His unfailing love continues forever, and his faithfulness continues to each generation.” Psalms 100:4-5
Two weeks ago, the Holy Spirit spoke to me about “how I had been praying.” Again, I was entering my daily prayer times with thanksgiving but as I began to pray for different people and situations I shifted from a posture of thanksgiving to more of a posture of carrying a burden for something that needed to happen or come to pass. I left my posture of thanksgiving and began praying from the posture of being burdened.
Of course we are to make our requests known to the Lord but our posture of thanksgiving must remain— it is where faith and confident hope are intertwined. I had somehow, unknowingly, began allowing faith and worry to be mingled together.
“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
The correction that the Spirit brought to me was that I was praying more from a place of burdens and worries than from faith and thanksgiving. I had allowed urgency to replace expectation regarding what he was going to do. I was also explaining to him all that he already knew before I asked— I was letting fear mix into my faith when I really needed to let thanksgiving be mixed with my faith.
““When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!” Matthew 6:7-8
Matthew 6 goes on to show how to pray, “…your Kingdom come, your will be done…”
Okay, back to the point of this article. I changed how I prayed for things— I began to thank him for the things that I had previously been “babbling about” to him. I also prayed the simple prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 within my daily time with him. And what I have witnessed is amazing turnarounds in the things I was praying for! Including some seemingly impossible situations turning around and being provided for! I have also experienced a restoration of profound peace around my heart and mind.
“Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
The peace that I am experiencing has exceeded anything that I can understand— and the breakthroughs have been so sudden. As I have began to thank him for what he is going to do in each situation (and life) rather than sharing my opinions on what needs to be done (who am I to counsel God on what he needs to do!), it has changed everything.
I have done intercession for over forty years and I have even spent years directing a house of prayer— yet in the past number of months my prayers had taken on a different tone and now I see that this tone was due to allowing burdens to create a sense of urgency which brought forth worry or fears. His Spirit adjusted my prayers in order to reveal something happening in my heart— something that was not leaving me with peace but rather a sense of urgency and ongoing burden.
I needed to go back to the simple place of thanksgiving and praying for “his Kingdom come and his will be done.” A lot of babbling over burdens has ceased and a lot of peace and breakthrough has come.
Remember, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been saved or how long you’ve walked with the Lord— we all have seasons that can begin to effect us and our prayers in ways that need to be realigned. The last six months of 2024 had been a time of being surrounded by a lot of people and situations that needed help and turnarounds. Some of them seemed urgent and I picked up those burdens. Over time I began to pray from the posture of the burden rather than from the posture of confident hope in God being a good Father.
Praying out of the burden rather than out of the thankfulness for all he has done (and all he will do) was robbing me of my peace. That simple adjustment not only restored my peace but has brought forth answers that I had not been seeing.
He bears our burdens— we are not to carry them and somehow believe that it is our “intercessional duty” to carry things that are too heavy for us. We are to enter the gates of prayer with thanksgiving and his presence with praise. Then we are to pray for his kingdom to come and his will to be done— remembering with gratitude all that he has done and knowing that he will do it again. This guards our hearts with peace that exceeds understanding, accomplishing more that we can ask or imagine!
“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think” Ephesians 3:20
I pray that this simple adjustment and counsel that his Spirit gave to me will help you to find peace and to see the turnarounds that only HE IS ABLE to do!
Kathi Pelton
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