Monthly Archives: July 2025

Mom’s Prayer that Invites God’s Transformative Love

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[from Gift a faithful, praying mom who walks in the Spirit by Katherine Bell]

Introduction

Some weeks back, I asked Mom to share the secrets of her oh, so close bond with the Lord. I had noticed over the years the way she had become more and more like Christ and walked out union with Him in heart, soul, mind, and strength. I knew she had sought out many anointed teachers and had received lots and lots of prayer from believers with strong prayer lives. And I had observed her many hours of soaking up the Word and mining it for spiritual and practical treasures. Mom is often found declaring out loud the promises of God which the Word tells us are all ours to receive. God says “yes” to every one of them.

2 Corinthians 1:20-22 The Message

20-22 Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete.

But those things I knew. And they all have had a very important part. But the secret she shared with me that she said was a real, breakthrough key to experiencing deeper and deeper, closer and closer fellowship with the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and the Father—all three Persons of the Godhead that are in us by the Spirit—the key to letting God be her very life and flow out to others consists of daily praying the prayer below. This prayer positions you to receive God’s transformative love. [Listen to the prophet Graham Cooke’s short, YouTube video on God’s unconditional love titled “Love Encounter,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6wlClByBG8 .]

1 John 4:16 The Message

This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.

Mom’s Prayer

I come before You, the God Who is love, to know You and to behold You in Your glory, beauty, and majesty. I humble myself in awe of You. I thank You that You are within me in the garden of my heart—the Eden within where I meet with You. I open my heart up fully to You. You passionately desire me to know and be known of You. You welcome me just as I am. 

Revelation 3:20 The Passion Translation

Behold, I’m standing at the door, knocking.[a] If your heart is open to hear my voice and you open the door within, I will come in to you and feast with you, and you will feast with me.[b]

Footnotes

  1. 3:20 The Aramaic can be translated “I have been standing at the door, knocking.” Jesus knocking on the door points us to the process of an ancient Jewish wedding invitation. In the days of Jesus, a bridegroom and his father would come to the door of the bride-to-be carrying the betrothal cup of wine and the bride-price. Standing outside, they would knock. If she fully opened the door, she was saying, “Yes, I will be your bride.” Jesus and his Father, in the same way, are knocking on the doors of our hearts, inviting us to be the bride of Christ.
  2. 3:20 This is likely taken from Song. 5:1–2, where the king knocks on the door of the heart of the Shulamite, longing to come in and feast with her.

James 4:8 The Message

Say a quiet yes to God and he’ll be there in no time.

James 4:8 The Passion Translation

8 Move your heart closer and closer to God, and he will come even closer to you.[a] 

Footnotes

  1. 4:8 The Aramaic can be translated “and he will be touching you.”

I bring everything of myself to You. I repent or change my mindset over anything that has not been of faith, Your love, or Your perfect will—anything that has not been aligned with Your heart. I thank You for Your forgiveness. I open myself to You for the continual restoring of my soul. Work out the restoration of all things in my life. 

Isaiah 53:5 The Passion Translation

5 But it was because of our rebellious deeds that he was pierced[a]
    and because of our sins that he was crushed.    He endured the punishment that made us completely whole,[b]    and in[c] his wounding[d] we found our healing.

Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 53:5 See Zech. 12:10; John 19:31-37; Rev. 1:7.
  2. Isaiah 53:5 This is the Hebrew word shalom, meaning “peace, prosperity, wholeness, success, well-being.” All of these have come to us through Christ’s sufferings.
  3. Isaiah 53:5 The Hebrew word could be translated “among his wounds (bruises)” or “in his wounds (bruises).” See the split-open rock of Song. 2:14.
  4. Isaiah 53:5 The Hebrew word for wounding (“scourging”) is chaburah and means “blueness of the wounds.” But chaburah is taken from the root word chabar, which means “to join together, to unite, to have fellowship, to become a couple.” A nuanced translation of Isaiah 53:5 could be “In the fellowship of being one with him is our healing.”

I give me to You as a living sacrifice. Search me and know me and try me and see if there is any path of pain I am walking on. 

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The Greatness of Drawing Close to Christ

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John, the disciple of Christ who penned Scripture, experienced the glory of knowing God. Like King David, he drank deeply of the love of God. In Psalm 73:23-24 and verse 28 David wrote of his relationship with the Lord, “You love me! You are holding my right hand! You will keep on guiding me all my life with Your wisdom and counsel . . . . But as for me, I get as close to Him as I can!”[1] John, too, came close and drank deeply. 

There is a song with a line in it that says, “God of glory, Lord of love, Hearts unfold like flowers before You, opening to the sun above.”[2] And an unfolded heart wide open to God and His higher ways—a heart no longer crippled because it is severed from its Divine Source of perfect love—is a heart on a journey to glory and greatness because it is being restored by its Maker to His intended design. John had such a heart. In fact, so much did he draw close to Christ that he became the picture of what happens when a man enters into the closest possible places of the Lord’s heart and mind. Jesus was the lover of John’s soul as he transformed the darkness of the state of selfish ambition into the light of the state of surrendered sonship in the image of the Pattern Son. And John wrote of the mystical union we are called to find in and with the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John dared to lean upon Jesus to experience His heart and know His secrets. The Father through Jesus shared with John the very secrets of agape love—the love that God is in His being and ever exudes. Finally, God called John to write of the union of God with redeemed men and women in eternal marriage in the heavenly Jerusalem in time to come. There the curse from the fall in Eden will be no more and men will so know the intense love of God for them that they will fulfill the command to “Love the Lord your God with every passion of your heart, with all the energy of your being, and with every thought that is in you.”[3] And the second, “Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.”[4] They will willingly serve Him as bondslaves—love slaves.

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