50. Praying for Protection, Peace, and Spiritual Grounding at Work

Practical ways Christian physicians can pray for protection, peace, and spiritual grounding at work.

Have you ever walked into the hospital or clinic and immediately felt heavy, drained, or unsettled? Do you sometimes wonder if the exhaustion you feel at work is more than just physical fatigue?

In this episode, I talk about something we don’t often discuss in medicine—the spiritual atmosphere of our workplaces. I share practical ways to pray for spiritual protection before, during, and after your shifts so you can stay grounded, peaceful, and centered in the middle of demanding days. Drawing from my own experiences and training in healing prayer ministry, I explain how simple, intentional prayers can make a real difference in how you show up at work.

We also explore how to recognize when stress and burnout may have a spiritual component, and how inviting God into your workday can bring clarity, strength, and renewed perspective. My hope is that this conversation helps you feel less burdened and more supported as you care for others.

Resource I mentioned: https://prayerfulbychm.org/

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Transcript

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Have you ever experienced that you go into your workplace, whether it's hospital or clinic, and you actually feel uneasy or heavy? If that is you this episode is for you because we are gonna unpack a little bit about the spiritual atmosphere in our workplace and how we can just. Pray and protect ourselves and just stand in the protection under the Lord. So stay tuned and we'll be right back. Hey, healers. Great to have you back on this episode. And on this episode I wanna address a little bit something that has popped up. I just read something today in a Facebook group about basically spiritual issues going on in their workplace, but I've, had conversations over the years with a number of people and my own experiences where we can feel under maybe spiritual attack or we feel exhausted and born out beyond what we feel like we should be physically feeling based on our demanding job. And I wanna just spend a few moments, maybe share a story or two, and give you some encouragement to basically pray over your workplace and over your own protection as you are working in your various environments, in the hospital's, clinics, wherever you work. I hope this will bless you and equip you and feel strengthened in the Lord. Now I learned this, sense of praying for my protection through training as a prayer minister. Some of you might know, but if you are newer or you have not heard, episode 1, 2, 3, where I share a little bit more about my testimony. But in essence, I had a massive encounter. Through prayer for one of my patients, which led to a miraculously recovery of one of my little bone marrow transplant patients that led me to be really on fire for mother Lord specifically prayer. At that time, I trained as a. Prayer minister focused on healing prayer ministry with Christian healing Ministries out of Jacksonville, Florida. A ministry that has existed for over four decades and is founded by this couple that founded this ministry in the Healing prayer movement in the sixties and seventies onwards. I am honored, thankful, grateful to the Lord who has put people in my path giants in the army of God that I can say. I was able to glean from them and stand on their shoulders and learn, and I'm very grateful for that. A number of years back when I was working still full time, I had this very interesting experience that typically I had clinic on Wednesday and every time a Wednesday. As I was getting home, I had this horrible headache that followed me essentially home. Every time like lock work. After clinic now, I was getting a lot of migraines in general and praise the Lord that I'm largely recovered here. Set free from that. I still have times where I do get headaches,, but usually there is a. Triggering cause like I didn't sleep enough or I didn't drink water. But anyways, those headaches would happen in general frequently. But Wednesday I could set clockwork when they would happen, which was very. Peculiar to me. At first I didn't notice it, and then I thought, huh, that's interesting. Maybe I'm making this up. And then I was like, oh, I'm probably not drinking enough water. Or maybe I didn't eat enough, or whatever it was. And over time I worked out all the environmental type of factors. I made sure I drank enough, I make sure I ate, I had snacks. I made I tried to sit in a quiet room to. Actually put my head down, get work done, and get my notes done. Which may be a fun topic for another time. How I do that because I coach physicians all the time on how to be productive in medicine. So I did all the things in the natural, the physician things one, knows how to do, but I'm like, okay, I eliminated all these factors. I don't actually understand why I get headaches particular after clinic. And I started to wonder and, be curious. Maybe there's a spiritual component. I couldn't pick anything up in particular that I was like, oh, it's around this or that. But I've just felt oh, maybe I should just pray of that. During that time, I was going through prayer ministry training with Christian Healing Ministries, and there is a prayer that, they teach a prayer of protection and a prayer to. Cut free after ministry time, essentially, it's basically an intentional prayer before the Lord. As we enter ministry time towards others to pray protection over us and be intentional with that, of course, by the blood of Jesus we are protected. But it is good to actually pray those prayers out loud and understand that we are. Whether you like it or not whether we want it or are aware of it or not. We are in a spiritual battle from day one. And we are in this cosmic battle. There is a natural world, there's a spiritual world, and they very much are interconnected, more than we realize. So I learned these prayers of protection prior to prayer ministry appointments, as well as prayers We would pray after we had prayed for people because people in prayer ministry appointments, when you minister to people, you might hear. A lot of difficult things, just like in our patient care that might weigh us down, attach to us emotionally and just wear our stone and we often don't realize it. And so I decided. To do a little fun experiment and I started to pray literally every day, but very intentionally every Wednesday before and after clinic. And I wanna share that with you quickly because it might encourage you, especially if you feel. Weight it down by the environment you're working in. Of course there's many factors, but there is a spiritual component. And then what I prayed afterwards, and perhaps what I will do is. Instead of going through the prayer in great detail, I will link the app they created, which is a beautiful app. It's called Prayerful. I will link it in the show notes and it's something you might wanna check out. It's a beautiful app for you to just have some prayers at hand when you don't know what to pray. Sometimes we are like, I know I should pray, but I'm out of words. And sometimes having a guided prayer can be a helpful thing. And what I love about this app, number one, you have it on the go. It gives you some foundations, some scriptural foundations, how this prayer came about. They're all written by the prayer ministry team these are all prayers we had in our study materials that largely are developed by Judith and Francis McNutt that formed the Christian Healing Prayer Ministry based on decades of experience praying for the sick. So they have a lot of experience, a lot of scriptural sound information, so I think it is a good resource. I will link it in the show notes. So that you can actually check it out. What I love is the brief, very short. Here's the foundation for this prayer where we are standing on why we are doing this prayer. What is the scriptural foundation? Then there's the actual prayer, so you can read, pray Out Loud, and then there are scripture references, which is important, so I love that part. For the prayer of protection, what I did is basically when I drove to work in the morning as I parked my car in the garage, I was just sitting in the car for a few minutes and praying over myself this particular prayer. And then sometimes the Holy Spirit might bring other things up. But this was my anchor and actually not only an anchor for, okay, I'm gonna pray for my protection as I go into work, but it also anchored and centered me on the Lord as I was doing my work. So this. Prayer is all focused on a prayer of protection and basically comes from the Lord's Prayer where it says, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil or the evil one. And this prayer basically acknowledges that we live in a spiritual world in which there are evil spirits that are. Committed to be evil against us. That's just how it works. But it also mirrors and enlarges Jesus. And in this case Jesus prayer for us. I think it's really beautiful and is really helpful. So on this prayer of protection, I prayed to remember that I stand in the authority of Jesus Christ, which is sometimes we often forget that. And that through Jesus not my own power and his sacrifice, his cross his blood by the power of him. We have overcome and we actually can stand in authority over evil spirits in the spiritual realm. And it goes into some specifics. And then I'd also ask or praise, bless my enemies. So very biblical prayer lead people to repentance and conversions. This is great to pray if you have people that are really after you at work, it gives you some structure. And what I found it has actually then moved me in the Holy Spirit. Brought to attention specific things. I filled in the blanks in between when I was praying this prayer from a literal prayer list essentially, or a written out prayer. It reminds us to put the full armor of God on and that we are safe in the Lord's protection. And so then I just closed off the prayer. I went off to work. It took me a few minutes, but it was an intentional time with the Lord. And then when I got out of the hospital, I prayed another prayer. And I'm looking for that prayer on the app right now, which is basically a prayer after ministry time for I think we call, they call that a prayer to cut free prayers. And the intent of this is, that we pray that after ministry time. In this case, I pray that after my hospital service because hey, it's ministry too, right? Because sometimes we worry about retaliation. The biggest thing is probably that there are things that we tend to carry and burden ourselves with that are not ours to carry. So I prayed that prayer again. In the parking lot in my car before I drove home, and it was a beautiful pause as well to set my mind back on focusing on Jesus and not taking the mess home. I think both of those. Book ends to pray. Before I walked in to pray, when I, before I drove home, was book ending my day and centering on Jesus in a beautiful way. This one was all focusing on giving thanks to the Lord that we actually. Can be healers in a healing ministry. You can make the words a little bit your own because this is talking about, praying for ministry for healing and deliverance which is maybe not what you're doing in a day-to-day in your clinic or in the hospital, but you are therefore works of healing, right? So thank the Lord for that. Thank him for what he is using you for. And I like this line a lot. This is really speaking to me. It says, we realize that the sickness and evil we encounter is more than our humanity can bear. So cleanse us from any sadness, negativity, despair that we may have picked up. This is eventually I. Would say this is foundational for all physicians, because I can tell you that. Even just the human aspect of things, seeing the suffering, the difficulty, the pain, the frustrations in the system, can all wear our stone. That's why it's called a burnout. But to bring them to Jesus, to lay our burden at his feet. And that's what that prayer helped me do. And I cannot tell you how much, that is actually needed another story for another time, but I did not realize, even though I thought I coped very well as a pediatric oncologist and I probably did that I still was carrying burdens. That are stored inside my body that I didn't realize until later, until I went through my own healing journey. And maybe I'll share that on another time in another episode. But so this prayer goes through basically saying, okay, Lord, there are things I'm seeing every day that really is difficult to bear. Please. Cleanse me from those, again, centering back on Jesus reminding us. In the next section, it actually talks about not to be tempted to anger or to impatience or lust. So anything we might feel that is basically the works of the flesh that we bring them to the Lord and. We ask him to replace them with the works of the spirit. You can read the prayer on the app. And then also if there is any spiritual retaliations that we call up on the name of Jesus for those. I think this is such a powerful way to approach our days. So if you do not have a prayer where you feel like I'm born out a little bit, I'm struggling or perhaps you're sensing something spiritual, actually at work, I have had people that are mentor come to me and say, I can sense the little evil in this place. Am I crazy? And I said. No, you're probably not crazy. You're probably pretty sensitive in the spirit and you are just figuring out how to walk that out and how to put language to it. And so if that is you, I encourage you. Don't be afraid and turn to the Lord. And pray these prayers to help you center and anchor yourself on the Lord because he is your rock and firm foundation. As a side note or a testimony that actually made a difference, these prayers and stepping away sometimes from an environment. So many of you know that I worked in academia for decades. I worked at this institution for seven or eight years before the Lord caught me away. And so I dealt with, the headaches I just described. I prayed those prayers and I did feel it made a difference. Now, the headaches didn't always disappear immediately after I prayed, but I would say there was an improvement and there was a new anchoring in him. And after I had left my job. I don't know if it was a year later or something. I went back to the hospital at some point because somebody asked me to come in and visit a patient and maybe pray with them. They were Christians, they were very much in the the diagnosis was what my expertise was. So I was there to basically lend support and encourage brother, sister in Christ and be a. A voice of reason if they had any sort of questions, how I could help them through this journey. So I went to the inpatient unit, I was in the adult hospital, and I could immediately pick up this spiritual atmosphere. Now, having said that, I had. Left that environment now for months or maybe a year, I don't remember exactly, but I could feel the difference and I was actually quite shocked by it. And I was fine walking in there, but soon after I walked in that atmosphere, I had the worst headache, just like in those days. And I think at that point I didn't have headaches anymore because God really relieved them for me. But, it was very interesting and I literally could, in my physical frame, pick up the sense of the spiritual atmosphere of the death of dispair. It was, I could feel it. Its hard to describe. It sounds maybe totally crazy in Coco to some of you, but I will tell you that I would have not noticed the difference if I didn't have a contrast. Because I was in that for decades, every day like we all are right. If we work full time Now, I stepped away and I had some healing and certainly had a. Deep spiritual journey even in that year. And then I came back and I immediately could feel the contrast. And the fascinating thing is I got the headache shortly after I walk in, I could feel the spiritual atmosphere. I prayed, I left that place, I still had a headache. And later I prayed those same set prayers I just mentioned. And. A little while after I got home it was gone. So to highlight that spiritual atmospheres matter, you might pick up something and let's just say our hospital grounds, our clinics. Have probably a very charged spiritual atmosphere based on what is happening there. So I wanna encourage you, pray those prayers lean on the Lord he has you covered. Put your attention to your focus on the Lord Book and your day. Praying before you go in. Praying when you leave, praying for protection. Pray for freedom as you leave and lean on the Lord. So I hope this encouraged you. If you feel like, wow, this is really helpful, check out that prayerful app I mentioned. I will put a link in the show notes if you want more mentoring. Check out the mentoring group. We talk about these kind of topics every. Week and our mentor and coach here, we have a coaching call once a month. We have a teaching series RS every Monday. This is not your average Bible study. This is deep spiritual work. This is scriptural. We do a lot of real scriptural teaching, but centered on topics for physicians as well as a lens of which we see the world. Issues we face. You will be equipped and encouraged, but if this is not for you, that's also fine. You have a wonderful day and I'll talk to you soon.