“Right now, you have a chance to speak positive things into your life.”

I was praying with my prayer partner the other day, when she sort of surprised me with this statement. Not for lack of need – my bank account is somewhere in the vicinity of a negative number, my student loans are as high as ever, I keep getting turned down for jobs, and I haven’t even found a church. Not that I’m not grateful for all I’ve received, but I definitely could use some Jesus-induced blessings in my life right about now.

Yet, I found myself stumbling over this. I should clarify that my prayer partner is VERY attuned to the still small voice that is God, and very attuned to the Holy Spirit within her. When she says “I feel like God is saying ____”, she’s probably right. Probably she’s definitely right.

So when she told that now is the time for me to be speaking positivity into my own life, I didn’t doubt it for a second. I simply found myself unable to do so. It should have been easy. But it wasn’t. I’m so used to praying for blessings and miracles for other people. When it comes to me, I pray for guidance and direction and to be used. Praying those blessings and miracles over myself was practically a foreign concept. And I couldn’t find the words to do it. As I stumbled through, I thought of the parable of the sower – how some seeds went on stones, and some on fertile ground. And I felt like God was telling me “you are the fertile ground”. There was more to His message, but I didn’t even get that far with Him because all I could think was “I’m supposed to be speaking positivity, and I’m fertile ground for blessings, so WHY can’t I tap into this and just speak the words?” My brain was totally clouded and I couldn’t come up with a single coherent sentence to put to prayer. And while I sat there, tears coming down my face at how spiritually barren I was right then, when that very moment God was telling me I was fertile ground, my prayer partner finally took over and spoke positivity into my life for me.

It was weird. But I realized something. I definitely need to practice praying positively. Yes, self-reflection is great. Praying over my shortcomings is fabulous – God’s word is the mirror that reveals them to us, after all. But being able to claim blessings and all the good things that God desires to shower over His children in the name of our sonship, that’s huge too! And I have been missing that whole side of it.

So I’m making a point this week to start praying at least one positive thing into my own life every time I pray, just to get used to doing it so that I can formulate an actual sentence eventually, and letting God guide me from there. Feel free to join me!

God bless!

~Rebekah A