Craig T. Owens

Jack Hayford’s latest book is reenergizing the way I pray for my family members. If you want to know why prayer for your family is so powerful, if you’re feeling a bit discouraged in the seemingly unanswered prayers for your family, or if you just want to “take it up a notch” as you pray, The Secrets Of Intercessory Prayer is for you (you can read my full book review by clicking here). These are a few quotes that especially caught my eye from this book.

“Prayer in all regards takes a new frame of reference when we understand the war between God’s Kingdom and satan’s dark hordes. This battle, insofar as it involves earth, is one in which God has called us to engage, enlisting us as ‘knee-soldiers’ whose prayer-call for the ‘incoming’ of God’s Kingdom will welcome a barrage of God’s power to break through the darkness and bring deliverance to people we know.”

“Let this truth grip you with hope: If the promise of God concerning His coming Messiah, His own Son, was interrupted by the failure of humanity (in this case, the later generations of David’s offspring) and God bridged and reconnected that ‘cut-off,’ then He wants us to understand this as a power-principle for prayer. Just as God navigated that failure and brought the tender plant out of the stump that had been cut off, so He is inviting you to pray and believe that He will do the same in your relationships.”

“Let the Holy Spirit shine a searchlight in your own heart and cleanse anything that restricts the power and liberty of your intercessory role in the family. I know that I am neutralized for effective prayer to the degree that negativity characterizes my attitude toward anyone for whom I pray.”

“We refuse to sustain that spirit of death and separation through any kind of ‘labeling.’ … Without such integrity of heart before God we may unwittingly be preventing our families and friends from receiving the flow of God’s life and love.”

“Praying for those we love is not a substitute for their need to hear God’s Word of truth—the Gospel. But many of those we find resisting already know it, and for them the ‘pushiness’ of a relative deepens resistance. On the other hand—as you abide in continual prayer—the truth that they may most need at the present is a sense of your acceptance of them, even as they understand that acceptance is not approval of sinful behavior. While it is painful to see a loved one persist in sin, especially if it is self-destructive, God’s Spirit has spoken or is speaking to them about their need to turn to Him. Our prayer for them is pivotal in this regard. But it is also our job to leave God’s part for Him to achieve, as only He can.”

“The greatest tool of evangelism when it comes to loved ones is to be genuinely loving and friendly to them without the taint of manipulation. … Winning people to Christ is not conquering them or verifying yourself. It is about showing so much of Jesus that they cannot resist Him.”

“The deeper we move into the last days, the greater the need for our young people to have the shelter and the shield, the presence and the power, the wisdom and the discernment of the Holy Spirit! …The literal word for perilous used in the Greek text of 2 Timothy 3:1 describes the last days as ‘evil, ferocious, lion-like and demon-filled.’”

“Here is a key point for us to embrace as we persevere in prayer for our loved ones: Jesus wants to minister through us.”

“We are capable of compromising our discipleship under Jesus’ Lordship, not by the values we hold but by the spirit in which we respond to those whose values offend Him. …If I am unwilling to pray with a heart of passion for sinners who indulge in the perverse, the shameful and the corrupt and who do it with glee, will my passion be driven by my anger or by my sense of God’s broken heart for such warping of one of His own creation, for such satanic bondage in a being He longs to know the beauty of His original purpose?”

“Instead of yielding to fatalism, hear the call: ‘Keep praying, even when tough stuff happens,’ and do this by invading the difficult with thanksgiving, because the truth larger than the problem is that God’s power can transform any mess when He is invited into it.”

“That is what the will of God is for us: to lift up praise to Him with gratitude for His nature, which does not plan the evil, the injurious or the painful, but who—in these things—is the only One able to address them in love, resolve them in wisdom, provide for them in grace and transform then by His power. Give thanks in song for that!”