I don’t know how to pray.

I don’t know if I’m the only one who experiences this, but sometimes I just don’t know how to pray. Someone is on my heart and I want to stand before the Father and agree with His plans and dreams over their lives, but after about 45 seconds I run out of things that make sense to pray. Maybe I over think it (ok, I totally do) but there’s a longing in me to really hit the nail on the head when I pray, and not to just pray token prayers or things that I don’t really feel in my gut. So yesterday I open my Bible to Colossians, mentally anticipating the verses that I know I will find along the way. Then right out of the gate, it hit me. I start reading chapter 1 and I make to about verse 9 before I begin to weep. It’s the head of the nail that I so often search for and deep calls to deep. 

I am by no means suggesting that this is a formula or a have-to-pray-it-daily prayer. But I would suggest that it is a powerful arrow in our quiver as we shoot down the assignments of the enemy. Lean in –

 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and long suffering with joy;  giving thanks to the Father who has QUALIFIED us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,  in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

As the Lord leads you to, pray this for yourself, your friends, your family, your enemies, political leaders, Christian leaders, congress, the senate, the lady you chat with at the grocery store, your spouse, your sons, your daughters….!  I’m overwhelmed even getting a glimpse of what our world would look like if our lives were marked by these four verses.
There’s so much more on my heart about this small passage, but I think I’ll let this settle for a while longer in my soul before I jump in again. I want these words to become a tangible part of my identity in Christ.