Episode 36: How Can I Pray for You Today?

The power of obedience and praying for others! I went outside to play with my dog and pray for people like I normally do in the mornings. But this time, I felt nudged by the Holy Spirit to reach out to the people who I’ve been praying for. Instead of listening, I could have focused on my tasks for the day, but I obeyed and reached out to friends, family, clients - telling them that I’m praying for them. Little did I know that it would lead to beautiful conversations - people sharing prayer requests and asking how they can be praying for me! I wanted to share this ripple effect of joy and connection by just obeying the nudge to reach out instead of just praying.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hey friends, welcome to the Only God podcast, where we share stories only God can write. I'm your host, Stephanie L. Jones. In each episode, we'll dive into powerful testimonies, have great conversations, and encouragement that remind us when the impossible happens, it's only God. Let's get started. Hey friends, it's Stephanie here with another episode of the Only God podcast, sharing stories only God can write. And today, uh, I gotta tell you, I'm gonna use some notes because something so cool happened this morning, and I'm scared that if I don't use my notes that I prepared, I'm gonna forget something. And it's like all the little details. I always think about when I get overwhelmed. This little tip for you is if I get overwhelmed about something that I cannot control, um, I pause and I remind myself that God is in the details. I don't have to be in control. I can surrender whatever it is and go, He's taking care of it, or those little things don't matter. God is bigger than all those little details. But this morning was a reminder of how God is in all those details. So I was outside and um I play ball with my dog, Maze, multiple times a day. He loves to run, he loves to play. And when I was out there, I really felt like, and I had already done my devotionals this morning. I had already done my prayer journaling, which um I talk about that on a previous episode. If you want to hear about that, you can go listen to that. And but honestly, a lot of my prayer journaling today was for a couple of people in my life, but not a lot of people. And I will say on my phone, so on the Bible app, um sorry, the lights, on the Bible app, there's like a little place where you can hit prayer. And I will often, if um, I don't have my paper or prayer journal, if people ask me like to pray for them, or I think if somebody, I'll just put it in um the Bible app, the UVersion Bible app, and so it's on there. And so oftentimes in the morning is I'll just pull that up and scroll and pray. What I love is once you pray for somebody, you can hit pray, but it's also a place where you can put notes. So for certain things or certain people, I can see like this progression or this timeline of where God worked, how God worked. Um, it also tells me how long I've been praying for somebody. And so I'll be honest, there are a lot of people in the app that I've been praying for. No joke, 24 weeks, 30 weeks. They have no idea that I'm praying for them. I have never let them know. It's just like maybe I've heard something, I saw something. Um, some of them I was speaking at a conference, and they're just some women that I knew needed prayer. So I put them on my prayer list. So this morning, I'm outside playing with my dog, and I really felt prompted, and that is just like it's a no-brainer when I'm playing with him. It's like I've got this little chuck of thing, I just chuck it. He runs around the yard. And so I just really felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to like open that apt. And while I was outside, just start praying for people. So I did that. I was obedient in that. And the verse of the day in the U Version Bible app today was Galatians 5, 25. And it says, Since we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit. And so that was really one of my prayers this morning. I just want to be in step with you today. Like, I don't want to be rushed, I don't want to do what is on Stephanie's list. I just want to be led by the spirit today. And a lot of days that's my prayer. And then I kind of get caught up in everything, but it is a good way to reset. It was just a good reminder this morning. And I don't have any client meetings till this afternoon. And so it was like, okay, I do have other stuff I need to be doing, I want to be doing, especially work-wise. But I just really felt like this is what the Lord was calling me to do today. And so I opened the Bible app and I pray for the first person. And once I prayed for them, um, I really felt the Holy Spirit saying, just send them a text that says, prayed for you today. I was like, okay. So I did that for the first person. And I have a lot of people on this list, and I just started doing that. I would pray for them. Um, and some some of it is I don't even know what I'm praying for. Like, you know, just like the Bible tells us that like the Holy Spirit will intercede on your behalf. And so I'm praying for the people, some it's specific, some it's not. And I just kept sending these texts. Well, one of the texts that I sent was to, I have a publishing company, and it's one of my clients. I'm working on her book. And in my list, it's a list of all my clients. And so I pray for my clients often. And so I sent her a text and just said that I was praying for her. And she immediately responded back, and I want to read this to you. And she said, first of all, she said, Thank you, Stephanie. Um, and then she said, Have you ever read Beth Moore's Chasing Vines? I'm leading a study on it, and it's wonderful. Would you have time for me to read you a brief paragraph? And I'm going to be very honest here. My first inclination was, I don't have time. Like, I'm praying, I'm doing these things, I got stuff to do. But then it was like the the Holy Spirit convicted me, and it's like, that's a lie. That was a lie from Satan. I did have time to have a conversation with her. And so I responded, yes. She called me and she read um a little bit of the text. And from there, like, God is just so cool when we're obedient and how He can use us. This is like the only God piece of the, I mean, the whole thing is only God. But, anyways, she's telling me that when Beth Moore wrote this book, she was in Italy. And I'm going to Italy at the end of June into July. And so I got excited about that because I've been reading books by women who have gone to Italy and their stories. And so I immediately bought the book. And I told my client friend this, and she's like, Oh, yeah, it's just gonna make your trip to Italy that much richer because she wrote it from there. So, anyways, that was the first only God thing. Then this client is um is a widow, and I knew that about her. She was somebody I really didn't know until she became one of my clients more recently. And um, she shared with me earlier on that she had been a widow, but it it came up again today. And she was just talking about how much joy she has in her life and this journey that God has had her on, and she's doing things that she never thought she was going to be doing. And I just as she was sharing that with me, I just asked her like how long she's been a widow, and she shared the time frame. And in my mind just popped up another friend who's become a widow more recently. And I always think of like those, I believe this morning that was the prompting of the Holy Spirit, of just like that's where our conversation went. And so I just asked her, like, hey, you know, I don't know where my friend is in her journey or if she'd be open to it, but like you've been there and um you've been on this journey longer than she has. And would you be willing to talk to her? And I did not know this about this client. And she said, yes, like I've I've talked to, I've supported, like the Lord has connected her. She said she was just at an event recently where it's like she got connected and was talking to two women, and they were both widows, and the Lord is just really using her in that way. I want to pause here because after I got off the phone with her and um I sent a voice message. I didn't think this was like a text to send to my friend. So I sent a voice message and I had already texted this friend this morning, letting her know that I was praying for her. And so I sent her a voice message and just like kind of gave her the scenario that I told you. And um, her response was beautiful. Like, thank you so much. And like, I don't think right now, because she does have some other things that are on her plate, but she's like, soon, like, thank you so much. And just like, isn't God great? I want to pause here because I think so many times in life is things like this happen. I always say God is the great orchestrator, orchestrating everything, and we have these only God moments, and the Holy Spirit is leading and guiding our steps. And then we come to this moment, and I think it would have been very easy for me to get in my mind on to even ask my client, hey, like, would you speak to my friend? Even just stink like I could have spun all up in that, but then I think having the courage, there is something, and I've just seen this of um with a lot. I mean, I've just had a lot of friends who have had loss, where I think we tend to sometimes tippy toe around their loss and their grief, and we withhold maybe gifts that God is trying to give them or people or thing, whatever it is, like where God might be interceding. It might be an answer, something they're praying for, somebody they are praying for. And we let our own mind like get in the way of well, what it, what if she's offended by this? What if she doesn't want to talk to this person? What if she thinks I'm overstepping my bounds? Again, it is the devil creating doubt. And what I've learned on my giving journey, um, you know, I I will talk about that. Gave a gift every day 522 days. I've been doing it now almost every day since 2011. Is what I've learned is it is not our responsibility, and we do not control people's reactions or their emotions or their willingness to receive what we are giving them. We are just called to be obedient, we are just called to be obedient and doing what we feel like the Holy Spirit is calling us to do. And then we give that to God, where I started. You know, we surrender that gift that we are giving. And this is where, you know, pray over these gifts, pray over these people, and um, they will either receive it or they won't. Or what I have found sometimes is they don't receive it at the time that we give it to them, but sometimes later on they receive it. We also, I mean, think about yourself, and sometimes in the morning or the day, or things happen in life where when somebody is giving us a gift at a certain time, is we just aren't even in the right headspace, or we don't have the capacity or emotion or something else is going on to receive that gift. But we are still grateful for that gift, like grateful that someone thought about us, grateful for that somebody took that extra step to care and to wrap around us. And so um, I just wanted to pause there because I think so many times we get in our own ways, we let the devil get in our own ways and block from the gift that God is calling us to give. The other thing that I want to say about this, so that was beautiful, you know, like all that came out of me just texting a client, like, how can I pray for you in the conversation? But what I've also found today is, you know, I can be very task-oriented every day. It's like, this is my list, this is what I want to accomplish. And this morning, it's been like two hours of kind of being in this prayer and conversations with people and going back. And that's one thing that my burnout journey, um, and I'll speak more to that later. And and that's something I often speak about from the stage is just my burnout journey and how do we break up with burnout? And you know, one of the beautiful parts of that is sitting still and and having this good morning with God and being in the Bible and letting the Holy Spirit lead. And so this morning, even though there's a lot of things on my list, it's like I just knew that this was the ultimate priority. And I talk a lot about in uh when I talk about burnt out, what is our priorities? And so my priorities is my faith and my relationship with Jesus Christ. Second is my husband, the third is third is my friends and family, and so, and then fourth is the work, you know, like the work is is down on that list. And so if I think about this morning of what is my priority, priority faith, relationship with God, being obedient to what he's calling me to do, and that was prayer. And then if you look at what my third priority is friends and family. So taking the time to have that conversation with a friend, but then this is like has been and totally has made my day. And this is where giving, like we give, and then we always get something back. Is um I have just had what this has done this morning, uh, because I've texted a lot of people on praying for you today, is one it is allowed people to share specific prayer requests that maybe I didn't know about. So now I can go back and pray specifically for those things. It has allowed people given them the opportunity to say, How can I pray for you? So now I have all these people praying for me today. How cool is that? I mean, these people who were not maybe thinking about me, not praying about me, are praying for me today. Think specifically. And then the other thing is, you know, some of these people I haven't talked to in a while, and they're giving me life updates and just things that are going on in their life. And so it's just this touch point and our friendship and this journey of our friendship. And that's been the coolest thing. Um, one of the coolest. It's just cool because it's like God uses our obedience in ways that we could never, I could never have scripted this morning. I could have just gone outside, played with my dog, wait till he wore out, brought him inside, got on with my day. And God said, I have something so much better for you. So I think I'll wrap up there today with my only God story, sharing stories. Only God could write. Uh, this is if this encouraged you, inspired you, feel free to share it with a friend, share it on social media, and subscribe. Have a fabulous day. Hey friends, thank you for joining me today on the Only God podcast. I hope today's story encouraged your faith and reminded you that God is still writing our stories each and every day. If you were inspired by this episode, please share, subscribe, and tell a friend. And to stay connected with me and find out about all my books and resources and events, go to shineforwardcreative.com. Have a fabulous day.