This blog has been written by a member of the Accessible Prophecy team.
A few years ago I experienced for the first time the power of crafted, prophetic prayer, and I would love to share with you what I learnt through this.
What do we mean by crafted, prophetic prayer?
This is the process by which we prayerfully seek God for the specific words to pray over a particular situation; we write them down; and then we pray these words regularly until either the situation changes or God tells us we need no longer pray them.
Often this may revolve around a number of scriptures which God will bring to mind. Once we have noted them and prayed over them, we ask the Holy Spirit to bring to our mind how He wants us to pray these scriptures over the situation or person. Then with His help, we write out a prayer which we feel reflects the Father’s heart. Then we declare or speak out God’s truth audibly over that situation. By continuing to pray this crafted prophetic prayer we keep our heart and mind focussed on God’s will rather than our own. When we are deeply distressed about something it helps to be able to read a prayer on a daily basis rather than having to fight our way through our own feelings afresh before we can pray.
A good friend of mine was experiencing difficulty in her marriage. Both she and her husband are Christians and I confess I was angry with him for being, as I saw it, the cause of her deep distress. I wanted to support them both in prayer but noticed that the attitude of my prayer for him was one of judgement rather than grace. I also realised that I was praying that his behaviour would change in ways which I believed would help my friend. My prayers had become manipulative.
In an effort to become a clean vessel of blessing I enrolled the help of a prophetic friend, asking her to ask the Lord what I could pray regularly over this man which would be in line with God’s will, rather than my own.
Unsurprisingly enough, God gave her 4 or 5 passages from the Bible which addressed, not his behaviour, but his heart, his identity, his up-building, strengthening and encouragement.
My friend then wrote out a prayer for me to use which declared over this man truths about God’s love for him and God’s desires for his life.
By way of example: “Lord, You have given xxx the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Yourself. Open the eyes of his heart so that he may know the hope to which You have called him. Reveal to him the riches of Your grace, his inheritance in You, Your greatness and mighty power which raised Christ from the dead. Show him that as his Father You can heal any hurt, repair any brokenness. You have the power to make all things new.” Based on Ephesians 1:17-20
Because I was so despairing about this situation I found it difficult to pray my own spontaneous prayers of hope over this man, so having this to read daily helped me engage constructively in the spiritual battle for this couple’s marriage.
After a number of months of praying this crafted, prophetic prayer I found to my delight that change was being wrought, not just in my friend’s husband but also in the attitude of my heart towards him. Instead of judgement I found I had grown in grace and hope both for him and for his marriage. In my heart I found I could love and accept him in his frailty and had grown supportive once more of them as a couple. Within the year my friend and her husband had grown much closer both to God and one another.
I believe that as my friend listened prophetically to God’s desire for this man’s life He gave her a prayer with which to build him up in Christ but also release me from the bitter root of judgement which I had allowed to grow in me.
I found Graham Cooke’s book “Crafted Prayer” very helpful in understanding how I can write my own crafted prayers both for my life and for the lives of others.