Prayer Unfiltered: Declaring Truth Without Decreeing Outcomes

Have you ever had someone pray for you with good intentions, but the words they used left you feeling more burdened than comforted?

In this episode of Prayer Unfiltered, Elizabeth and Kimberly talk about declaration prayers, healing, blessing, and the power of the words we speak over others. This conversation came from real questions listeners have been asking about whether it is biblical, and wise, to declare specific outcomes when praying for someone else.

This episode is not anti-prayer, anti-faith, or anti-healing. We believe deeply in the power of prayer, the authority of Jesus’ name, and the goodness of God. But we also believe that words matter, especially when someone is vulnerable, sick, grieving, or walking through a difficult season.

Elizabeth and Kimberly explore the difference between declaring truth and decreeing an outcome. We can boldly declare who God is, who we are in Christ, and what Scripture says is true. But we also want to be careful not to place pressure on someone to carry a promise God may not have spoken in that moment.

We cover topics, such as:

✔️ Declaration prayers and biblical truth

✔️ Healing prayer and spiritual authority

✔️ Why words can bless or burden

✔️ The difference between declaring truth and decreeing outcomes

✔️ How to pray for someone who is hurting

✔️ The power of blessing the human spirit

✔️ Trusting God when healing does not come the way we expected

You’ll also hear more about why The Father’s Business often uses the language of blessing: inviting the spirit, soul, and body to receive everything Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have, while still trusting God with the outcome.

Listen in as Elizabeth and Kimberly offer a thoughtful, pastoral, and biblically grounded conversation for anyone who has wrestled with prayer, healing, suffering, and the words we use when we come alongside others. We also hope this episode gives you language, wisdom, and courage to pray boldly while loving tenderly.

Transcript

When Prayer Adds A Burden

SPEAKER_02 0:00

We're stepping into someone else's story when they are vulnerable. We may be thinking that we're giving them hope, but what we're actually giving them is more to carry. Now I have to carry that person's disappointment if I'm not healed. Because they've declared it and they said Jesus is going to do this for you. And now it's up to me to kind of somehow fulfill this declaration that's been made over me. Hey friends, I'm Kimberly. And I'm Elizabeth. And this is the Father's Business Podcast, born out of Sylvia Gunter's heart for people to know who God is and who they are in him.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

So wherever you're listening from today, we pray that you will sense his nearness and know that you are his beloved sons and daughters. We're really glad you're here with us today.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Well, welcome back, friends, to the Father's Business Podcast. I am so happy that Kimberly is back. Hi, Kimberly. Hi. I'm so glad you came back when you didn't stay away at graduation forever. I'm so happy. Yep. Glad to be back so we can have more fun conversations. And you can throw me in the deep end of the pool as you love to do. And I think today's conversation might do just that. So today we're going to be talking a little bit about the language we

Why Declarations Feel Uncomfortable

SPEAKER_02 1:22

use when we pray. Um, because out of the podcasts that I recorded while Kimberly was away at a family event, have come more questions, which we love. We love that y'all are listening to this carefully and thinking it through and wanting to ask us your honest questions. And the questions I'm getting are coming from very personal real life experiences. So we will not be sharing those. But the idea of it is is it okay, is it proper to use declaration in prayer when praying for other people? And the people that have contacted me are the ones that received the declaration prayer. So they are in a place where they are struggling with something, and someone has come along and started praying declarations over them that they will be completely healed, that God is going to move, that things are going to change, and they're feeling a little uncomfortable with the language of it all. So, Kimberly, today we want to have a conversation about what does the Bible say about using declarations in prayer and also where do we need to be a little mindful? Because there's a lot of power in words, isn't there?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yeah, there is. And so I think that's something we want to clarify from the beginning is we are not anti-prayer in this conversation. We're not anti-faith in this conversation, we're not anti-healing in this conversation, not just in this conversation. We're not we're not those things at all. We do believe in healing, we do believe in spiritual authority. We totally believe in the power of Jesus' name and praying out loud and praying in blessing others and resisting the darkness. And like you said, language matters, words matter. In fact, Proverbs 18, 21 says that death and life are in the power of the tongue. That's pretty powerful. When we say that words can bless or they can curse, that's that's what Proverbs is saying there. They do have that power. Words matter.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Yeah, they do. And that I think that's the heart of this is even the person who contacted me about a friend. I mean, it was someone she knew and trusted who declared a healing prayer over her as she was in the midst of, I think, even at a hospital. Like she was she was in a very serious medical situation, and the friend called her to declare those prayers over her. It wasn't that she didn't feel loved by her friend. Like the heart and the motive of the friend, I think was pure. She she wants her friend to be healed. I mean, Kimberly, if you had something going on in your body, I would pray like crazy that God would heal you for that. It's the language that was used, and we want to kind of unpack that a little bit because what we want to be mindful of is when we are passionate for our friends, our family, whoever, and we're declaring we we speak healing over you, we believe God's gonna move and God's gonna do this and God's gonna do that. It can actually cause more pain and doubt in the person you're praying for than be helpful because sometimes God doesn't move in the way that we think he's going to. Then what do they do? So, Kimberly, I know we both have had situations in our lives where either people have prayed for us or we've had loved ones that have gone through those types of situations. So what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah, like you said, Elizabeth, I have seen that happen too. I had a friend who was struggling. And like you said, these are well-meaning people who are speaking to their friends usually, and they just this person just started declaring complete healing over my friend. It was not that the person praying was trying to do anything harmful. I really believe that they wanted to pray boldly. One of the things that I think we miss when we do this is that we don't sometimes ask permission.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

And I don't think that we really pause to listen to the person as well, maybe as God. I want to be careful to not be judgmental or offensive. And

The Pressure Of Promised Healing

SPEAKER_01 4:58

at the same time, my friend specifically said that the question that naturally came to her was so if I'm not healed, is my faith weak? It didn't sit well with her and it didn't sit well with me. And it's it's not just that it it didn't sit right, but there's also this idea of sometimes God allows us to walk through sickness. Sometimes God allows us to walk through very painful and difficult things, like Job. Come on, like take away everything but your life, buddy, you know? Yeah. And how difficult that must have been. And I I've talked plenty about my own story on here with my dad in particular, because that was a season where God taught me a lot in my wrestling through my faith with him in that journey. And no one was declaring on me that my dad would be healed, but I wrestled through is God saying that my dad is healed?

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

I felt like there was a season where I felt like God is God is telling me or promising me that he's gonna heal my dad. Right. And I held that loosely to some degree, but to another degree, I was really disappointed when it didn't happen because I I felt like my own faith might have been weak or that I heard God wrong. And so how much more, like that was inside of me that I could control, how much more impactful or powerful can that be when someone else is kind of declaring that to us or putting that on us without listening to God or without asking the person for permission to share that. Because I do believe there are times where God may have a purpose in us being sick or in us walking through difficult things, because who can understand the mind of God, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Yeah, and I think oftentimes what we think is giving hope to a person can actually be more of a burden put on a person. And I mean, there are times, very few, when I have really sensed God say to me as I'm praying about something, kind of like, it's okay. I've got her, I've got this. It's, you know, it's gonna work out. And I'm always hesitant to even share that with the person that I'm praying for. Like it's just because you sense it doesn't mean that you need to go declare it. And also, as you're saying, Kimberly, not not everything's healed on this side of heaven. Yes, God, God ultimately heals everybody. It's called it's called a full redemption. Sometimes it happens here, and I've seen it happen, and it's amazing. And other times it doesn't happen here. And that does leave the person receiving the declaration prayers with just a really hard weight that you're now asking them to carry on top of what they're going through. And the thing I want to be so protective of for the people that are receiving these types of prayers is typically they're vulnerable. Like something in their life is not going well. Like Kimberly, I don't come up to you and declare that God is going to give you full healing when you're healthy, right? I would come to you when you are in a hospital or got a bad diagnosis or something, something's not right in your life, is when these prayers have a tendency to show up or financial issues. Like, I mean, pick whatever crisis you want to be a part of. You can make a declaration prayer about anything. But the problem is we're stepping into someone else's story when they are vulnerable. And we may be thinking that we're giving them hope, but what we're actually giving them is more to carry. Because I'm sure your friend and mine, the one who emailed us, feels like, well, great, now I have to carry that person's disappointment if I'm not healed, because they've declared it and they said, Jesus is going to do this for you. And now it's up to me to kind of somehow fulfill this declaration that's been made over me. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because it's a matter of pastoral concern or shepherding, if we want to look at it that way, like deeply caring for someone. We don't want to put someone in a place where they're spiritually trapped or they're spiritually burdened. Um, because when someone's uncomfortable and they walk away saying, Well, what am I supposed to do with this? What, you know, what happens if I'm not healed in the way that that person declared? You know, am I supposed to agree with something that they're saying? Is that the same thing God's saying? Like it can leave you with a lot of questions. And that's not, to me, that's not what we see in the scriptures over and over again as a pastoral care and concern for someone because we are taught throughout the New Testament as we see Jesus interacting with people in his years of ministry, over and over again, he saw people, he saw the person. They were not projects. He had assignments from his father, but they were not an assignment that he was supposed to conquer. I don't think he healed them always to make them well, he healed them to point them to Jesus, to God the Father. Jesus healed people to point them to God, to show the greatness of God. And so when we are declaring that someone be healed or not struggle with that, you know, have freedom in this area of their life or whatever, and and we're declaring that, and they're not supposed to name those things because those are not what God would have for you. If that's causing someone else's faith to be shaken, I don't see how that's pointing us to the glory of God the Father.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

I think of Romans 12, 15, that says that we're supposed to rejoice with those that rejoice and weep with those that weep. And so I think it's a lot more about coming in alongside our our friends, our families, of the people, and kind of aligning with where they are emotionally, and then also asking God, God, what what it what is my part from my friend right here in front of me? Now, some of you may hear, well, hey, my part was to declare the complete healing over their body. Okay, great. Can you do that silently instead of saying it out loud? Yes, you can. Like there, there's a wisdom to this. And I, and again, we're we don't want to do anything in absolutes. We're never saying there's never a point where you don't declare things to people out loud. But I would have to know that I know, that I know, that I know that I'm supposed to speak that boldly to the person in front of them. I might declare it out loud in my own prayer closet, but laying that on the shoulders of the person who is struggling can be hard. And I know this is a trend. And this was part of the question the person asked is it's not just their one friend who prayed. The more prayer materials they're seeing, this is a trend being written into Christian books and teaching, is that you just declare and God will make it so because we have authority. And Kimberly, you and I are gonna unpack all that and get into that later, probably in next week's podcast. But we need to just be mindful that there are things we can declare. Kimberly, we can declare who God is for our friend. We can declare who they are in Christ, we can declare the promises that God has given us in scripture. There's a ton of things that we can declare. We can declare that our God is a God who heals. But as you were just saying, if Jesus' plan and purpose on this earth when he healed someone was just to heal people instead of bringing glory to the Father, then Jesus would have healed everybody. He didn't. I mean, I think of even the story about the the pool and the and the spirit would come and stir the waters, and only the first one who got to the pool would be healed, which I don't want to get into the deep end on that one either, because I don't fully understand it. But why didn't God heal everybody around the pool every time? There are people Jesus passed by that he didn't heal. And there are then there are people that he did. And I think it's getting to the heart of what you're saying, Kimberly, which is there was a higher purpose, there was a greater glory involved, more so than just healing everybody. And I think that's where we do have to be tender and not step in, as you were saying, sometimes there's a reason for sickness. What if God has given this person this particular problem, physical, financial, relational, whatever it may be, for this season? Because there's something they need to teach that person that they could only learn through that set of circumstances. And then I come in and immediately say, God doesn't want you to have these circumstances at all. He wants you to be in complete wholeness. Well, who knows more about what's going on in the greater story, me or him? And so it's about, again, submitted authority, knowing our place, and having passion, praying for more, begging God for everything he wants to release and give us, but not overstep it to a point that it leaves our friends wondering why they didn't receive the declaration that you gave them and what did they do wrong, which is where that typically lands. It's not that it was wrong for my

Declaring Truth Versus Outcomes

SPEAKER_02 13:10

friend to pray it, it's that I didn't have enough faith to receive it.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Yeah. You were just talking about this. There's the idea of declaring truth versus decreeing an outcome. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

That's a that's a very good point.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Yeah, it's and that's like you said, there are lots of times an appropriateness for us to declare truth. I want to look at some of what scripture says. Like you said, we can declare who God is. We can declare the truth of who God is. First Corinthians 1 9 says, God is faithful. Psalm 23 says, the Lord is my shepherd. Romans 10 9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. We're confessing with our mouth, with others, that Jesus is Lord. We can declare, as Psalm 46, 1 says, that God is our refuge and strength, the very present help in trouble. So I can pray with my friend who's sick, and I can declare, God, you are our refuge and strength. You are a very present help in this time of trouble for my friend. Show up for her. You know, like that is declaring truth versus decreeing an outcome for her. We declare who we are in Christ. We talk about that a lot around here. We say that a lot. I'm a covenant daughter, I'm a covenant son of the God most high, and I'm on kingdom business. You said that last week. We are on kingdom business to declare the truth and the glory of who God is. We can declare that we belong to Jesus. We are not our own. First Corinthians 6, 19 through 20 says, we were bought at a price. And we declare that I belong to Jesus. You belong to Jesus as his child. 1 John 3 1 says, see what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. We can declare, I am loved by the Father. I am a child of God. Ephesians 2.6, we can declare I am seated with Christ, because it says that we are seated with him in the heavenly places. Hebrews 13, 5. We've touched on this one before. God tells us, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we can declare the truth that we are not abandoned. We can declare the truth that Scripture has promised that God will never leave us and he will never forsake us. Again, that's Hebrews 13 5, along with Deuteronomy 31.6. In times of seeking wisdom from the Lord, we don't declare an outcome for someone there. We remind them of James 1.5 that God gives generously, wisdom generously to those who ask. We can often declare to one another in Psalm 34.18 that God is near to the brokenhearted, and that in Psalm 34.17, right before that, he hears the cries of his children. It says when the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of their troubles. So these are just some of the declarations. Go back and listen to that list, write down those verses, look through them. These declarations are powerful because they bring us back into agreement with what God has already said. So the problem is not declaring truth, right? Right. It's going beyond that.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Yeah. Yeah, it's the difference between declaring, I declare that God is your healer, versus I declare that God is going to heal you this month. Those are two very different types of declarations. And I, again, let's lean on the side of caution that we want to declare who God is. Because if I'm sick and you come to me, Kimberly, and you say to me, Elizabeth, I declare to you that God is your healer and he is faithful and he has not left you. That raises my gaze up. That gets me not focused on me and looking more towards who he is. But if you come to me and say, Elizabeth, I declare that you will be healed next week or this disease is not going to take you out, you're going to be healed by it. All of that is about me. And that makes me want to look more inward, right? Versus lifting my gaze beyond the circumstances I find myself in to the truth of who God is. So people could say, well, this is just semantics. Well, they're important semantics because people are getting injured by the way we choose to use our words. And that is why at the Father's Business, we spend a lot more time talking about blessing and the power of blessing than we do declaration. Now, in prayer portions and in prayer essentials for living in his presence, one and two,

Why We Teach Blessing Language

SPEAKER_02 17:07

there are declaration prayers, but almost all of them, as far as I can remember, are declaration prayers about who God is and who God can be for you in situations, not declarations of if you pray this magic formula prayer, then you're gonna be completely healed from whatever you're dealing with. So we focus on the language of blessings. We've got a whole study on that called Rock Journey that I would encourage you to go through. But uh, we also have blessing books. You are blessed in the names of God, blessings for life. So it's the idea of inviting the person's spirit, soul, and body to come into alignment with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and receive from him everything that he has for them. So we have blessing prayers in our books and we use them regularly. Like even when this the friend emailed me and said, This is what this declaration prayer sounded like to me, I was like, Well, this is how I would have done it differently. And what I wrote her back was a blessing and blessing her spirit to receive from God's spirit everything her body needed for complete physical healing. It doesn't declare that it's gonna happen, it invites her spirit to receive it. And we we have some stories that we'll share about that where we have seen physical healing, we've seen people saved from financial ruin. Like there are real needs in life and real everyday problems that we've seen God move through the power of blessing. So, Kimberly, before we kind of move into stories and a little bit more about blessing and how we use that more than declaration prayers, why do you think people think declaration prayers are needed or are important?

SPEAKER_01 18:41

So we're specifically talking about if someone wants to not bless someone, but if someone wants to declare the healing or declare the financial gain over here or the success over here, right? Those kinds of things. Yes. Yeah. I I think some people use that language probably because it feels bold. It feels firm, like they're standing on God's promises. And we want to stand on God's promises. We want to cling to God's promises. But maybe they feel like their faith is weak if they don't pray a declaration prayer. Maybe they feel like I'm I'm agreeing with fear and I don't want to agree with fear and sickness. Maybe they want to focus on the abundant life that God promised us, or they want to focus on uh prosperity and hope and those kinds of things. So because I do think that some people are genuinely wanting to just pray boldly. You know, they want to push back the darkness. They want to push back the suffering when they see their loved one walking through something. I think that their instinct is not necessarily wrong because the desire, I'm looking at the very positive side of this from how the under the people I know who have done this, they desire to speak life. They desire to pray with faith, and those are good things. They want to resist despair and darkness, and and those things are good. And yet we have to ask, are my words strengthening this person or are they putting pressure on this person? Am I helping them receive from God what He has for them? Or am I inadvertently even requiring that they agree with my hope and my certainty? And another question would be Am I praying from faith or am I trying to manage my own fear by saying something definitive? Because I mean, a lot of people don't like people being sick or dealing with financial loss or whatever it is in their life, right? And so we don't often know how to handle that. I mean, I I've said it for a long time. I we don't know what to say to someone when they're really sick. We don't know what to say to someone when they've lost a loved one or when crisis is really hard. And the truth is, to take a little sidestep here, we don't have to say a whole lot. We just need to be present and be Emmanuel, God with us, with them. Yeah. But I think we don't know how to do that because then we want to not miss out on the opportunity to declare the goodness of God because God is good in the midst of this. So I think I go round and round with this because that's what starts to happen, right? Like we're, you know, it it we have lots of thoughts about all of this.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Yeah, and I'm I I hear you. And also I'm thinking of a situation where the issue going on with a person was they were struggling with depression. And so, you know, I know that person, some people did very well and were very comforting and just present with them. But there were some people that came into their life and started declaring basically that, you know, where we just speak against all depression in your life. And not only just that, that's fine. If you want to push back darkness, I'm all for it. Go back and listen to the last two podcasts if you don't believe me. But yeah, I would pray for them that anything that's not of God would be pushed back. But it almost turns into a shaming language when you're the one who's hurting, when you're the one suffering the problem, and someone comes along and just starts declaring the opposite to you. And it's like, but that's not how I feel right now. I I don't feel that I am not. Not meant to be sad or have these deep, dark emotions in my life. Because you look through the Psalms, David was depressed a lot. He spent a lot of time in lament and a lot of time asking why has God has abandoned him and those types of things. And even, you know, the friends of Job who came along, they weren't a whole lot of help because they didn't just sit with him in it. They even told them, why don't you just curse God and die? Like, well, well, if you got friends like that, who needs enemies? So it's again, it's not about not praying boldly and not stepping into the lives of our friends. It's just understanding that heart that's under there. And I think you're right, Kimberly. Oftentimes when someone has lost someone or we're struggling with something deep in our own life, we feel uncomfortable. I don't like my friend feeling that way, or I don't know how God's going to show up and figure this is a big problem. And I don't see a solution here for my friend. And so I think we get uncomfortable with that place. And so then our mouth just kind of starts saying things that we hope will be true, but we say it in such a language that makes it sound like God has promised it's going to be true. And that's where the damage can come in.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

I think some people are probably thinking, but doesn't scripture sometimes teach that we declare things? Which if you're thinking that, hang on, we're gonna get there. We'll get there. We're gonna get there. Um, but I also think in the midst of what we're talking about right now, Elizabeth, it it would be helpful for you to elaborate a little bit more on why, why at the Father's Business and in our podcast, we teach a lot about blessing, blessing ourselves, blessing our spirit, blessing others. Can you talk talk a little bit more about that? Because I think it's important to have that foundation before we jump to some of the other pieces. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

And and for people who were alive during biblical times, the art, the the thought of blessing was much more common than it is now. It's not a practice that is a part of our current day churches much. I mean, there are church, I'm not saying no one does it, but it's not as common as it would have been then. You see, you know, God blessing Adam and Eve and blessing them to go be fruitful and multiply in Genesis. And then it just continues throughout. So many of the stories we have in the Old Testament are about the blessing of the birthright and the passing down of the blessing. Very famous scripture that a lot of us could probably quote out of Numbers six: the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you and give you peace. And then in the New Testament, you've got Jesus blessing the people. You've got Paul when he writes his letters to the early church, they often either begin or end with a blessing and specifically a blessing of their spirit. And that is because we are created as a three-part being, spirit, soul, and body. And God's design is for all of our spirit, all of our soul, all of our body to be in alignment with him, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And blessing is just one way to pray. It does not replace prayer. It's not like the new thing and we get rid of everything else we've ever learned, but it is a way that we allow our spirit on the inside of us, which is our connector piece, where our human spirit and the Holy Spirit that indwells us, connect there and invite that part of us to take the lead over our minds that are finite, over our emotions that aren't always telling the truth, over our bodies that fail us, and allow the fullness of who God has created us to be to be in the lead and lead us through that. So blessing is not watered down authority. In some ways, I think it's actually stronger. And we have a few stories that we can share about that where people had prayed and prayed and prayed over a person, and then we invited them to start using either daily spirit blessings, you are blessed in the names of God or blessings for life, and just blessing their spirit daily and watch God move in ways that they hadn't seen before. Now, that is not to say that if you again, I'm not gonna get into formulas, you know, read our books and everything's great. That is that is not the advertisement. I would be a very rich woman if that was true. That is not always true. But our blessings are based in scripture. And so they're basically doing what we've been talking about. They're declaring to ourselves, or when we read a blessing over someone else, we're declaring to someone else, but in a softer, less intimidating way. We're inviting them. We're inviting them to see that God is good. We're inviting them to step up into their full identity. We're inviting them to do it rather than telling them. So it is partly about permission. And it is also partly about doing things that get beyond what my brain can understand and my emotions can feel and allow my spirit connected to God's spirit to be that connector piece. So we I we do a thing at our Ruok Journey conferences where we uh bless the spirits of people who come there. We start blessing their spirit like 30 days before they show up, then we teach them about blessing their own spirit. We give them time

Stories Of Blessing And Healing

SPEAKER_02 26:48

to go hear from God while they're at the conference, and then we send them home with resources so they can continue to do so. And I have had more than one story, the most dramatic one I know. We did not say a single word about physical healing at Ruach Journey. We bless their identity, we bless them to know the father's heart, we bless them to know that they are loved. And a woman who came into our conference on a cane on Friday walked up to me and said, Come with me. And I walked with her, and she took the cane and she threw it in the dumpster. And I was like, Okay. She basically quoted Proverbs 1722 to me, which is a joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit makes the bones sick, and told me that through blessing her spirit and calling her spirit to be in the lead over her soul and her body, she didn't need her cane anymore. I didn't even have language for that one, Kimberly. That one was new to me, but I knew it could be true. But we never went into that conference with the expectation that physical healing was going to happen as we bless someone's spirit. And we have another story that we actually have recorded from our dear friend Richard, who's a member of the Father's Business Board. I remember when he called and told me this story after it happened over the phone. I was like, I didn't know the books were that good. So I we want to take a minute and let you listen to Richard's story about using a blessing from you are blessed in the names of God for one of his friends.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

The teaching of the spirit, soul, and body is so valuable in so many ways, and especially the teaching that the spirit that God breathed into us has the ability and has a healing ability over the soul and the body. And I had a particularly powerful uh example and experience with this myself when uh along with 19 other men went on a golf trip together and we all eat dinner together, and during one of those dinners at a very long table, uh a member of our group uh choked on a piece of meat. And uh fortunately we had a doctor in our group and we had an emergency room nurse at the next table. Uh but our our friend passed out and was without oxygen for a lengthy period of time. And so we were praying at the end of the table. As it turned out, the emergency were able to remove the meat from his throat, but he was without oxygen for what we believe was 12 minutes. He was taken to the hospital and put into a drug-induced coma. And so we went back to our rooms that night and and prayed for him. And I was really uncertain as to what exactly what to do, but I had been trained on uh the power of the human spirit and its healing nature over the soul and body. And I had uh Sylvia's book, uh You Are Blessed in the Names of God. And so I prayed about that and and came to the conclusion that was led to think that I needed to be at the hospital early the next morning and to pray these blessings over our friend in the hope that that that would make a difference. And so the next morning I got up early, went to the hospital, asked the doctor if I could pray with my friend. He he agreed and and and left me alone in the room with my friend who was in a drug-induced coma. He was completely comatosed. So the first thing I did was to invite his spirit to come to the front and take the lead over his soul and body, and he sat up like he had been hit by an electric shock. Uh and it actually scared me to death because he sat up so quickly. Uh but then I blessed it, blessed his spirit with the physical healing blessings, and the doctor came in and and then asked me to leave because he was getting uh agitated as a result. Ended up leaving the hospital three days later with absolutely no brain damage, uh totally healthy, and is very and totally healthy to this day. It was a perfect example of that the spirit does not need the brain to function. The spirit is listening and is capable of hearing and so speaking directly to his spirit from from my voice and my spirit to his spirit, he was able to hear and was able to respond. And then in blessing his spirit, his spirit apparently had an ability to heal his soul and body because he did recover completely after being w without oxygen for such a a very long period of time, and and no one really knew how this would turn out, but it turned out perfectly well, and he is healthy to this day.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

I think that's a very moving story and testimony from Richard. And just like we said, we're not turning that testimony into a formula at all. We're not saying if you read this blessing, every person that you know in a coma will wake up. Right. That that is not not what we're saying. We're not saying say these words and this exact same thing will happen. We are saying that blessing is powerful. And Elizabeth, I think you've done a good job to explain that. And we have other podcasts where we talk about blessing. You can look those up and listen to those and books that you can buy and resources where you can become more familiar with with blessing others and blessing your own spirit. As you've said, Elizabeth, and and I want to reiterate with my own words, is that blessing gives us a language to come into agreement with God's heart. It honors the person's spirit, it invites them to receive from Father, Son, and Spirit what God has for them. So it's placing the whole moment in front of Jesus, which is we're told to come and keep coming, you know? And so I think that's where, as hard as it is to bring things to him and trust him, we trust him. And so I think what Richard's testimony does is it encourages us to bless boldly, right? It's not in our control. All of this prayer-unfiltered series is about trusting God to be in control of the outcomes. We don't have permission to control the outcomes. And that's where we said in the very beginning, prayer is about trusting God. Prayer is about a relationship with God. But what blessing does is it gives us the courage to trust God with the outcome. One of the things I love about the resources that the Father's business has regarding blessing your spirit is because sometimes I don't even know the language. Sometimes I can get so caught up in my circumstance or in the circumstance of another person that I can't find the words. And sometimes I think that's why we declare certain things. We don't know what else to do, right? That's what we're saying. But I think those resources have helped me hone in to scripture, to God's word, to the the ideas and the theological concepts with it contained within God's word to say this is how I can bless someone, this is how I can bless myself. And it is about coming into agreement with God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Yeah. And I think, Kimberly, thinking of Richard's example specifically, if I had been in that ICU room and told to pray for that person, I don't think I would have prayed what happened, where he just the person like woke up when they weren't sure that he was going to make a recovery. And I I love that story. I mean, one, I didn't believe it in R when Richard first told me about it. And I was like, wow, okay, this is more powerful than even I understood. But also by blessing, we're also giving God all the room. Like he may have a much bigger idea in mind of what he wants to do versus me declaring this is what God's going to do. And it's this, you know, it's small and he wants to do big. And so by blessing the person to receive from God everything he has for them, I'm opening the door much wider for God to move in and do whatever he wants to do. Cause I I wouldn't have dreamed that one up for sure that day. I'm glad it was actually Richard in that room instead of me. Because even me reading the words that I helped my mom write in that book, if that started happening in front of me, I might have freaked out a little bit. So I'm grateful uh for people who have taken our resources and just trusted God's gonna do what God is gonna do. And I have my own testimony,

Not A Formula And Next Week

SPEAKER_02 34:42

Kimberly, it doesn't always work because I mean, you think about it, my dad got Alzheimer's and died from Alzheimer's, and I spent the entire time he had Alzheimer's blessing his spirit like crazy, because my one hope was I can't control what's happening to his brain and his body, but his spirit doesn't have Alzheimer's. So I can still bless his spirit and invite his spirit to receive from God. But God didn't heal my dad. He I watched him wither away over years. And it's like, okay, well, if Sylvia Gunter, who wrote the blessing books and has fervently prayed and invested and blessed this man who is her husband, my dad, and then we continue to bless his spirit through that whole thing, it didn't mean that he was physically healed. But I do have my own thoughts and and some reasons as to why that may not have happened. And I I won't get into those because that's that's my story with my dad and some things that I think God was doing during that time in him. I know he definitely was doing things in me and my mom, but would we have gone through those things? Would we have understood those things? Would I have the compassion I do now for other people in similar situations had I not walked through it? No. And so I can see how God allowed a disease to be a part of my story that then has been a part of me blessing others and also deeply molding my own walk with God, much like Kimberly, you know, your story with losing your dad so young has so impacted your story. So I I'm this is I don't want anyone to hear, well, if you would just bless someone's spirit, then everything's gonna be okay. But I do take comfort in the fact that I think my dad was less fearful when I did. And when his brain couldn't understand what was going on, his spirit was still okay in there and could help keep him calm. And I can't wait to get to heaven one day and go, okay, God, let's let's pull back the curtain a little bit. What all was going on in there? And what all were you doing in the midst of all of that? So it's not a magic formula. It does we don't bless to control outcomes, as you just said, Kimberly, but it is a way to invite more of who God is to come down to the deepest part of who we are and impact our lives. So I know I can hear it. Kimberly, can you hear it? Already the pushback on, but doesn't scripture say this and doesn't God command us to do that? Yes, there are several scriptures in the Bible that talk about declaring and speaking to a mountain and the mountain will move and all those types of things. And so you need to come back next week because we're gonna play devil's advocate for a bit and talk about what people may be pushing back on from what we're talking about this week. So we're gonna do a deep dive into some scriptures to try to understand the heart of God and what some of those verses in the Bible mean when it talks about us declaring and speaking and things happening. So we hope you will join us next when we go even deeper. Kimberly, do you have your floaties? Are you ready for the deep end of the pool? I'm ready to throw them to you as I as I toss it to you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, the ball is gonna go both ways over the net this next time. So we're gonna jump into some deeper questions that come up about declaration prayers and speaking declarations over people next week on our podcast. So we look forward to seeing you there.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

Yeah. And I hope that as we wrap up, I want to encourage you, if you have questions, you can send them our way. Just know we are gonna do our best to keep wrestling with this and answering it. We have always said we don't have all the answers, but we have thoughts, we have ideas, we're looking at scripture. And and these things are real. So if you're wrestling with it and you're pushing back right now, hang on, come back next week. We promise we're gonna talk more about it, and we look forward to hearing what you think about it too.

Donate And Follow Along

SPEAKER_02 38:19

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