Supplication

Dear All,

Thank you so very much for coming on this journey with us over the last 5 days. I have been blessed beyond I could have imagined with the encouraging words and messages I've been getting. I believe the Lord will and is rewarding us for our faithfulness and perseverance.You have no idea how special each one of you is, who has participated in this, to my family. The fact that many of you do not even know much dad at all blesses us so much. The family of God is amazing, we can even not know someone but we will pray because they are our brother or sister in Christ!

Yesterday a friend of mine reminded me of the amazing scripture in Phillipians 4. I read the new king james version because i love the way it is written so these verses are in that format.
Philippians 4:4-7
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
5 Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.
6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

That piece of God's word is amazing, for me it is my favourite bit of the bible. For me, summed up it says, "give thanks, be happy, don't worry, give it to God and He'll give you peace". Awesomeness!! Well I have read this section uncountable times and today I was really drawn to the word supplication. The dictionary says to supplicate means to "ask humbly or earnestly, as by praying" or "to make a humble entreaty to, beseech". How cool is that! So it's saying we need to humble ourselves and ask earnestly. You'll notice verse 6 says prayer and supplication, that means the two go hand in hand but are separate. it would seem you can pray without supplicating, but i would think in this context you couldn't supplicate without praying. Supplication goes deeper than just praying. we all shoot up "help me" prayers to God during our day, I know I do it loads each day, but supplication means we need to humble ourselves, realise that we are undeserving, unworthy to be in His presence, but can come to the throne of God by grace and ask God with all ferver and depth for our requests and needs.

The concordance bit of my bible says about supplicaton: "supplication is more than petitioning, but suggests an intensity of earnestness in extended prayer-not to gain merit by many words, but to transfer fully the burden of one's soul into God's hands." WHOA!!!! that is deep!! Ephesians 6:18 says: "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints—". It talks about the link with the Spirit and supplication. To me that means praying in the words that the Holy Spirit has given you, so that it is not our words that transfer our soul's into God's hands but by the groanings and tongues of the Spirit that we become united with God.

So in context, when you are seeking God today, supplicate to Him. Pray your prayers but go one step deeper and lean into Him and with the help of the Holy Spirit extend your prayer into the depth that is only found in supplication. How challenging for our everyday prayer lives. The way to really connect with God, not to have to worry or fret, is to pray with an open heart earnestly seeking God's face in our situations and knowing that by doing so we will experience peace. I am so grateful that we can push through life with that promise hanging over us. With all that my family has been through this particular bit of Philippians has kept me perservering. Almost child-like in faith, i just say well if God says I can just leave it there and take His peace in return, then that is exactly what I'm going to do. Amen. Let's all have a little child-like faith today and believe God's amazing Word and know that we can leave things at His throne and walk away with His peace that surpasses all understanding.


Prayer points for the final day of prayer and fasting:
1. Healing. This is why we have come together in this. Let us pray and supplicate for my dad's FULL healing!!

2. Again for my dad's appetite to increase and that he would put on weight and continue to feel hungry.

3. For peace. Sometimes in the thick of it, it is easy to take our eyes of God and put it on to the situation. Please pray that we keep God-focused and have His almighty peace deep in our hearts.

4. Kind of a selfish one- I have my medical school finals starting tomorrow for 2 weeks. I could really use God's favour with each exam I take. My exams are on mon, tues, and thurs mornings this week, and weds and fri the following.


Thank you all so much again! This is the last of my daily ramblings, I hope you've enjoyed them!

God bless

Shahlaa xx