An Invitation to Prayer E-Book

Kathy Branzell

• Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 196

Beschreibung

What are you chasing in life? If you seek the five core needs (love, peace, wisdom, happiness, and purpose) in people, possessions, positions of power, or posts on social media, you'll end up bouncing from one empty experience to the next. God is pursuing you, and He offers each of these treasures with an open hand. An Invitation to Prayer invites you to: • begin each week reflecting on God's unchanging nature. • receive love, peace, wisdom, happiness, and purpose. • speak peace to fear and anxiety and learn to pray from a place of rest. • detox unwanted thoughts and behaviors and replace them with helpful habits. • be still long enough for God to fully embrace you. Devote the next ninety days to prayer and develop a lifestyle of intimacy with God. He offers all the treasures you have been searching for.  

Leseprobe

ENDORSEMENTS

Kathy Branzell’s An Invitation to Prayer is a power-packed toolkit for anyone who wants to have a ninety-day journey into the heart of God. It is filled with wonderful biblical inspiration and illustrations that give practical help for everyone. However, the true power of this toolkit is the “how to do it” daily for ninety days. Read this great book, faithfully use it, and your life will never be the same!

—Glenn Sheppard, president/CEO of International Prayer Ministries,founding member of America’s National Prayer Committee, former seniorassociate for prayer for The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism

Kathy Branzell always makes me smile! She is a down-to-earth, real person who lives her faith and shines with the beauty and vitality of Jesus Christ. These ninety morsels of insight in An Invitation to Prayer flow out of her own vital experience and are so practical and simple to apply for anyone caught up in the busy grind of life. Slow down and let these brief, no-nonsense daily meditations guide you into deeper intimacy with the One who so lovingly is right now pursuing you to fulfill your unique destiny full of peace, love, wisdom, happiness, and purpose.

—John Robb, chairman, International Prayer Council, www.ipcprayer.org

An Invitation to Prayer by Kathy Branzell is going to give you everything you need in practical ways to draw near to God and experience a greater intimacy in prayer. Kathy doesn’t just tell you how important that is. She shows you how to draw near.

—Dr. David Butts, president, Harvest Prayer Ministries, and chairman,America’s National Prayer Committee

Kathy Branzell is a deeply committed woman of prayer. Her book, An Invitation to Prayer, helps us better understand how deeply God loves us as He longs to enable us to live our lives filled with love from him, for him, and for others.

—Paul Cedar, honorary chairman, The Table Coalition

Sometimes prayer is reduced to an activity or a discipline to be checked off each day instead of being about a relationship with a very real Jesus who lives in us, who lives to intercede for us, and who longs to launch us into the deeper waters of love and service for the sake of his kingdom. In An Invitation to Prayer, Kathy Branzell will take you on a ninety-day journey to explore intimacy with God through prayer that will forever change how you pray, how you love, and how you serve!

—Kim Butts, Harvest Prayer Ministry

An Invitation to Prayer is a book on prayer written by a real life “daily sitting in my prayer closet” author. It is the only book on prayer you need to read. Kathy Branzell has personally taught us the power of prayer by living out her life alongside our ministry. An Invitation to Prayer is an excellent resource for all of us who want to experience the reality of the healing, teaching, and redeeming power of prayer with our Pursuer.

—Jim and Martha Brangenberg, radio cohosts, iWork4Him Ministries, Inc.

BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC

Savage, Minnesota, USA

BroadStreetPublishing.com

AN INVITATION TO PRAYER:

DEVELOPING A LIFESTYLE OF INTIMACY WITH GOD

Copyright © 2019 Kathy Branzell

978-1-4245-5676-2 (softcover)

978-1-4245-5677-9 (e-book)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Unless indicated otherwise, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188, USA. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright © 2000; 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NCV are taken from the New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked CEB are taken from the Common English Bible, Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible.

Stock or custom editions of BroadStreet Publishing titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, ministry, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected].

Cover and interior by Garborg Design at GarborgDesign.com

Printed in the United States of America

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DEDICATION

I am deeply blessed with family and friends who love the Lord and love me. I want to thank my husband, Russ, for his prayers, his enduring love and support, and for the thousands of books he has purchased for me in my desire to learn, love, and serve the Lord. I want to thank my son, Chandler, and daughter, Emily, for inspiring me to keep going and growing in the Lord. To my parents, Dave and Joyce, my deepest gratitude for raising me to love God, his Word, and the church, and for showing me what serving God looks like on a day-today basis. Thank you to my friends who prayed me through this book and throughout life. I thank God for all of you and the happiness you bring into my life as we share and show the love of Jesus together. I love you all!

CONTENTS

Foreword by Dr. Ronnie Floyd

Stop the Chase—Be Embraced

Week 1Defined and Designed by God

Week 2Prayer

Week 3Before You Were Born

Week 4Beyond

Week 5Christ Follower

Week 6Rest

Week 7Higher

Week 8Trials and Tribulations

Week 9Sow and Grow

Week 10Store Up

Week 11Unity

Week 12Called to Discipleship

Week 13Abide

Endnotes

About the Author

FOREWORD

I serve as senior pastor of Cross Church and president of the National Day of Prayer Task Force. We are committed to mobilizing unified public prayer for America.

One of the great joys of serving in this role is meeting so many great people. One star that shines so brightly for Jesus Christ is Kathy Branzell. Her unwavering commitment to Christ is one of the many reasons Kathy serves on the board of directors for the National Day of Prayer.

Let me introduce you to Kathy. I’ve seen Kathy share her heart in vision meetings with our board. Kathy is a prayer warrior and seasoned veteran in prayer. I’ve seen her support and encourage her husband, Russ, and together live out this vision of prayer. This extraordinary couple is committed to living and leading others to passionately pursue God in prayer.

If you are searching for greater peace, deeper love, godly wisdom, real happiness, or personal purpose in your life, then you have opened the right book. While you may be in search of one or all of these, it is the God of heaven who is pursuing you personally and passionately. At every turn you take in your life, God is there, always inviting you to pray and to talk to him personally.

I believe the Lord is inviting you to walk with him on this ninety-day journey. When you do, your life will never be the same again.

Dr. Ronnie Floyd, senior pastor, Cross Church;

president, National Day of Prayer;

former president, Southern Baptist Convention

STOP THE CHASE—BE EMBRACED

God is pursuing you with all you need and with all he created you to desire. This ninety-day journey will change you by challenging and equipping you, in prayer and God’s Word, to stop the chase to be embraced by all you have been searching for—and more.

Everywhere I have traveled, served, and taught, I find that people are looking for these five things—love, peace, wisdom, happiness, and purpose. It does not matter if they are incredibly rich or unimaginably poor, American or another nationality, Christian or not, or what their skin color or cultural background, they are searching for these same five things. They seek to satisfy their need for these in people, purchases, power, positions of authority, and pain-reducing habits that all end in feeling more pain. They exhaust themselves chasing false fulfillment. Meanwhile, God is lovingly inviting us to prayer: a place of relationship, receiving, and rest. God, the divine designer of our hearts and the author of our destiny, knows exactly what we need to be fulfilled and to fulfill his plans. He pursues us, desiring to draw us close and into his presence and provision.

Our core conscience is constantly asking, Am I safe? The response is better known as fight or flight. If the answer is, Yes, you are safe, the second question we seek is, Am I loved or cared for? Only when the answer is yes to both of these does the brain ask itself, What can I learn? A person who does not feel safe and loved does not have the capacity to learn. Think about that for a moment—think about all the people who go to work, school, and live in relationships who do not have a safe or loving environment either at home, work, or school, but we expect them to focus, learn, and produce every day, not realizing that they are not physically or mentally able to do so. Often, we try to share or listen and learn about Jesus but do not have the capacity to hear and take heart in what is being shared because of these unmet needs.

Each week has a theme that runs throughout all seven days’ devotionals. We begin on Sunday, looking at how that theme is found and focused in God and Scripture. The remainder of each week takes the theme to discuss how each of the five needs are fulfilled by God, looking at peace on Monday, love on Tuesday, wisdom on Wednesday, happiness on Thursday, and purpose on Friday. On Saturday we selah, pause and ponder how we will believe and behave differently based on what we have learned that week. Saturday will prompt you to review and respond to that week’s invitation to prayer and how God embraces you with what you have been searching for in these areas. Each week will challenge and change you as your faith grows in God’s embrace.

Through prayer, Scripture, and science, this book will help you realize that in Christ, we are safe, which gives us peace, and we are deeply loved. These allow us to receive the wisdom we need to release wrong thinking and habits and replace them with Spirit-filled attitudes and actions. These enable us to choose happiness, which lifts us to and through purposeful lives.

WEEK 1 DEFINED AND DESIGNED BY GOD

DAY 1

SUNDAY: FOCUSED AND FOUND IN GOD

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

GENESIS 1:1 NLT

We begin this ninety-day journey together with the understanding that God created us in his image, with great love and purpose. You are wonderfully made for a wonder-filled life. He pursues you, as Psalm 23:6 says: “Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the LORD forever” (NLT).

God designed you and all that exists. He has prepared and provided all that you need, and patiently pursues you with his provision in an invitation to prayer. His love for you runs deeper than you can imagine. It is on this path that we will walk together for the next ninety days in Scripture and prayer, to understand how God defines and designed us, and all that we are searching for to live a fruitful, purposeful life.

Every human being searches for peace, love, wisdom, happiness, and purpose. God designed you to want them, and to walk in them with him. You cannot have any of these apart from him. You may have a taste of them, a shallow counterfeit that the world offers, but don’t be fooled; if you want the real thing, it can only come from God. You can chase power, positions, possessions, and people to try to fulfill you, but that is not how God designed you, so they will never fulfill that yearning inside of you. For the next ninety days, you are invited to stop the chase to be embraced by all that you have been searching for. To see things from God’s point of view and his view of you as he pursues you in an everlasting story that begins before time existed and lasts for all eternity.

INVITATION TO PRAYER

Heavenly Father, my creator and Lord, thank you for this journey of seeing how you defined and designed me for your peace, love, wisdom, happiness, and purpose. This story is not a fairy tale, not once upon a time, but for all time, a true story of the Prince of Peace pursuing those he loves with more than we could ever dream or imagine. Keep me on this journey, faithful to read and reflect every day, as I accept your invitation to pray and wait in your embrace, in your strength, design, and time.

DAY 2

MONDAY: PEACE

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;

and the government will rest on His shoulders;

and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor,

Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

ISAIAH 9:6

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith,

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

ROMANS 5:1 NIV

Biblical peace is so much more than a sunset on a quiet beach or reading a book on a balcony with a mountain view. Tranquil moments are good for the soul, but they are not the sustaining peace we read about in Scripture. Biblical peace is safety and security found in Christ, the Prince of Peace, who invites us to peace through salvation. To see how peace is defined and designed by God, you have two verses today to help you understand that peace with God can only come from Jesus, and the peace of God is both earthly and eternal.

Peace can mean a lack of conflict with man, or more importantly, the soul’s assured agreement with God—the peace provided by Jesus on the cross. Peace is the calm in the storm as well as the contentment and courage in daily life when one trusts God. Peace is an observable characteristic of faith; as we will study later, it passes understanding and gives Christ followers an opportunity to explain their peace in times of peril.

Peace with God allows us to have those tranquil moments; it allows our minds and hearts to be settled and still. Peace is exhibited in a quiet mind, able to rest instead of churning in constant chaos of responsibilities or the world raging around us. Peace fights the good fight without compromising biblical character or values; it does not run away and cower but seeks resolution found in truth and love. Peace prevails even when circumstances seem to say otherwise, knowing that God is at work in all things for his glory and our good when we love him and desire his purposes to prosper in our lives.

INVITATION TO PRAYER

Lord Jesus, you are the Prince of Peace and the provider of peace. Thank you for your love that paid my sin debt and brought peace with the Father. Let peace, not panic, prevail and flow from my heart to my words and deeds.

DAY 3

TUESDAY: LOVE

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast;

it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,

but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things,

believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 CORINTHIANS 13:4–7 ESV

Love is a complicated word to discuss; it conjures up thoughts and expressions that we have experienced—a dream come true and disappointments. We may picture a precious old couple who have been married for over sixty years, or a string of broken relationships we or someone close to us has stumbled over or even through. Love bubbles up a spring, or sometimes a geyser, of emotions. Most, if not all, of these thoughts and feelings are based on earthly relationships—romantic, family, friend, team or work related, and even people who attend school or church with us.

Love is not supposed to be defined by these experiences; it is defined by God, the one who designed it. To put it in a meme you could post: Love properly defined has a divine design.

If you are a parent or even have a beloved pet, you can understand to some extent that training, discipline, and boundaries are all a part of love. So why do we tend to think that God only loves us when we are doing, and getting, everything we desire? Is that what a successful, respectful, and loving relationship looks like between two people? Of course not! Then why would we believe that this is how we experience love from God who is love? God designed prayer to be the place where you can know and grow in his love—true love that is always and forever.

Throughout this book, when you read, think, and pray about love, always connect it with God’s love that he designed for you to experience and express.

INVITATION TO PRAYER

Lord, 1 John 4:8 reminds us that “God is love.” Real love begins and ends with you, it flows from you, and it is part of your unchanging character from which you created us and gave your Son for us. Your love blesses, disciples, and disciplines us. You authored our days with love and pursue us with love every day. You love us with an everlasting love. Help me to receive and reflect your love.

DAY 4

WEDNESDAY: WISDOM

For the LORD gives wisdom;

from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

PROVERBS 2:6 ESV

Wisdom is much more than knowledge you get from reading a book, and it goes deeper than understanding that comes through experience and application. Wisdom is received and reflected in your walk with God. Wisdom comes from God. It goes beyond knowing what to say and what to do; it is the character with which to follow through.

Wisdom is aptitude in action that binds together mind, heart, soul, and strength as one walks with God; it is not given in an instant, but over a lifetime through a lifestyle of intimacy with God. Wisdom is learned in prayer as you listen to God, wait on him, read his Word, worship, work, make decisions, and build relationships. Wisdom wraps itself around our everyday routines and weaves itself into discernment and decisions. It first springs from the “fear of the Lord,” an awefilled respect and reverence of God, and then flows from the constant contact we keep in relationship with him.

The book of Proverbs is filled with examples that compare and contrast the lifestyle of a person who is wise with that of a fool. God does not design or desire that any person be a fool. He has designed us with glorifying, kingdom-significant purpose and then equips us for that purpose with all that we need to succeed. Wisdom for every moment of our lives flows through us when we pray and abide in him.

INVITATION TO PRAYER

Lord Jesus, thank you for your wisdom that is defined in your character and designed for our calling. I want to walk with you, listening for your instructions and inspiration so that I say and do exactly what you destined me to do for your glory and kingdom’s gain. I will seek your face and search your Word for wisdom in all things. I do not want to be a fool, and I do not want to make decisions based on emotions, fear, or pressure but by your will. I want you to be at the center of my relationships so that your focus and fruit abound in me and through me. I know that I can only accomplish your will through your wisdom, and I seek it in the stillness of this moment and as I move through each day.

DAY 5

THURSDAY: HAPPINESS

A merry heart does good, like medicine,

but a broken spirit dries the bones.

PROVERBS 17:22 N KJV

Happiness is not a mood; it is a meaning-filled mindset based on the way God defined and designed you. Over two decades of scientific research on happiness now fills bookshelves and medical journals, sharing the science of what Scripture has always said: we are biologically created for happiness. Happiness produces success, not the other way around; it enables us to be “more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative and productive.”1 Neuroscience is a great interest of mine because I love how you hear God whisper, “I told you so,” as you read how wonderfully we are created. As you read today’s verse, you should note that a happy heart helps bring strength as well as success; there are also numerous medical studies that show how stress and sadness dries up and weakens your bones.

As I reference science throughout this book, please remember that God chooses to reveal himself in many ways, but we must always keep our heart and mind set on the Creator and remember his infinite mightiness will always have some mystery to our finite minds. Science simply studies with earthly education what our heavenly Father created.

Happy, as we will see throughout this book, is the word we read as blessed many times in the New Testament. What could possibly make you happier than to be created, loved, equipped, and guarded by God? The Bible is filled with messages that bring meaningful and sustaining happiness to our lives and enable us to be successful in our relationships and responsibilities. Like everything else, it is a choice; we can decide what we focus on and if we are going to trash or treasure that thought, emotion, and response.

Real happiness finds its roots in God’s love and provision for our lives. Stop chasing success and be embraced by happiness, the emotion that God ordained for your mind and body to run at its optimal level and be successful.

INVITATION TO PRAYER

Gracious Lord, I will choose to be happy because I recognize that I am blessed. I will focus on your love that provides for my life, and let happiness do its work in my body and brain as you designed it. I will remember your goodness and count my blessings in times of stress or sorrow, knowing my happiness is found in you and not my circumstances. Thank you for designing happiness to strengthen my body, brain, and bones.

DAY 6

FRIDAY: PURPOSE

“And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart,

and with all your soul, and with all your mind,

and with all your strength.” The second is this,

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

There is no other commandment greater than these.

MARK 12:30–31