Darkened footsteps in a cold alley near my home in the dead of the night with a sudden rattling on my door would start my heart racing with fear, especially if I was watching the news of a serial killer. Wisdom would make me wake up my household, pick up my mobile to call 100, but I wouldn’t be sure it would work, or I would start praying frantically.
Life is unpredictable and just over the last few years, daily, we are confronted with fiends with twisted intensions, COVID-19, killer diseases, financial crashes, bad political leaders who want to choke the life out of us with their policies, just name it and you got it. We run to courts which take years and our time, we file FIR and that’s great, only some police forces have a problem with filing one, perhaps too much work for them with the loads of daily crimes.
In the panorama of life, we have the greatest connection available to us, but millions of us don’t feel it important enough to use, or take it up as a last resort just at the tail end of things or at the dusk of life. This wonderful weapon and gift we have is prayer. God, the Creator has endowed us with great authority through prayer.
I was reminded today of years back when I was walking down a darkened street in the evening as I was going home. As I walked along, there was a man standing at the end of the street, leaning against a pole leering at me. I knew that look with its evil intensions. I prayed, “Dear God, protect me!”
As I kept walked, the man kept staring at me and I hurried by, he was not deterred but gaped openly and boldly and I started to panic because no one was around.
Then I heard a voice deep within me saying, “Take up your spiritual authority and keep praying.”
In my heart, I prayed silently with great conviction, but silently.
The man suddenly looked confused, and looked away. He continued looking away while I passed him silently and swiftly. I reached home safely that evening safe.
Most people stopped believing in God simply because they stopped connecting to Him in prayers.
For example, what if there is a shootout where we are, would we actually start to pray hard during the attack, do you think it would change things? The truth is there are millions of true stories of situations where people were miraculously protected and delivered in such times.
Many times, in a horrific situation, I have silently prayed and the air clears up very fast. As we learn to pray through a storm, it calms down, as prayer through a battle, the situation changes. This is called breaking down a stronghold. We can break negative strongholds through prayer. A bad stronghold is a situation in our lives which becomes strengthened because we allow it to develop its walls, we never pray about it, and it garners greater strength over time in a bid to destroy us later. Prayer and also making crucial important steps in a fresh direction breaks such strongholds.
While we pray silently, a lot of us find greater release praying aloud because the words we say resonate around us and build up a positive vibration; fill us with greater energy, wash away our fears and things start to change.
Psalm 91 is a powerful prayer of protection and just reciting these words has given me tremendous strength in bad times.
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.[a] 2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
3 Surely He will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. 4 He will cover you with his feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. 5 You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, 6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. 7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
Rita
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