As a wife, mother, and woman, I admit I spend a lot of my time considering the needs of those in my life before my own needs. Even in prayer. If I’m honest, there is even a part of me that can feel guilty for praying for myself, as if it is selfish or “unholy.”
Which is absolutely ridiculous! I know it is, but that hasn’t meant it’s been easy to train my brain to remember to pray for myself.
So, if you’re a girl like me, who has struggled to pray for herself, let me remind you, Jesus prayed for Himself! (John 17:1-6; Luke 22:42-43)
Here are 10 Ways You Can Pray for Yourself:
1– Pray for your mind. Ask the Lord to help you focus at work, or throughout the day. That your mind would be clear, focused, determined to be fixed on the things of God, and that you would not allow thoughts to be entertained that are ungodly.
2– Pray for your body/health. Ask the Lord to help you steward your health and body. That it would be vessel that is honored and used for His glory.
3– Pray for faith. Ask the Lord to grow your faith as you press into a relationship with Him. Ask Him to give you eyes to see what He is doing and ears to hear His voice in your life.
4– Pray for discernment. Ask the Lord to illuminate things in your world so you can see things from His perspective and not that of this world. So that you will know His will in your life and you will be able to refrain from things that would bring you harm.
5– Pray for friendships. Ask the Lord to bring you godly friendships and help you build a community of believers you can live in authentic and honest relationships with.
6– Pray for faithfulness. Ask the Lord to show you where and how He is faithful in your life and then pray that you would model back that faithfulness in the world you live in.
7– Pray for opportunity. Whether opportunity to share the Gospel, or opportunities to be the hands and feet of Jesus to this world, or opportunities in your work and relationships…ask God to open opportunities only He can open in your life.
8– Pray for obedience. We can know what to do, have the discernment in situations and opportunities available, but if we are not obedient to God’s callings we waste everything. Ask God to help you live obediently to what He calls you to.
9– Pray for a tender heart to the Spirit. It can be so easy in this noisy world to tune out the voice of the Holy Spirit. So ask the Lord to soften your heart so it would respond in gentleness and submission.
10– Pray for the burdens on your heart. It’s not wrong to pray about the things that weight heavy in your life, whether they are physical needs, emotional needs, mental needs, or anything else. Bring everything to the Lord, there is nothing too big that He cannot handle and nothing too small He does not care about.
Friend, as a child of God, one of His beloved children, we have the high privilege of being able to step into the throne room of grace and present our prayers before the Lord. Not only should we be praying for others, we must also learn to pray for ourselves. So use these 10 areas as a launching point as you build the habit of prayer in your life.
Start today! You won’t regret it.
