The Prophet Prayer Described Pdf

[Colby DuLin]

Doyou want to increase your effectiveness when you pray? Seek prayers with a prophetic anointing. You will find that when God orchestrates them they sail straight as an arrow and hit the mark every single time.

Anna the prophet gives us a look into a life well-lived in service to the kingdom of God. She is the only named female prophet in the New Testament. The story of Anna in the Bible comes to us from Luke 2:36-38. Through her steadfast faith, Anna invites us to contemplate the expectation of the living hope we find in Christ Jesus.

Anna the prophet. She is a woman who, as I imagine it, walks into the temple and simply glows. In her place, I can picture so many of the saintly women in my life who have devoted themselves to the work of the church. I imagine her gracing the temple with her presence and being an expansive presence to all around her.

She is described as being the daughter of Phanuel and of the tribe of Asher. Luke names her father and tribe, making her one of the few New Testament characters with tribal listings. Others who hold tribal listings include Jesus, of the house and lineage of David and the tribe of Judah (Luke 2:4; Matthew 1:1-16); Saul of the tribe of Benjamin (Philippians 3:5); and Barnabas, a Levite (Acts 4:36).1

Anna is the only named female prophet in the New Testament. Combined with her advanced standing in her community and dedication to prayer in the temple, this suggests Anna was a woman of remarkable faith.

If she was married at around 14 years old (a common age for women to wed at that time) and was married for seven years, Anna would have been 21 years old when she was widowed. The text reads that she was a widow until she was 84 years old. Some interpret the text to say that she was a widow for 84 years, which would make her around 105 years old when she met the family of Jesus.

When Anna was widowed at a young age, she could have taken a different posture. She could have sulked or fallen into deep sadness, but instead she shows up here, at the tail-end of the Christmas narrative. She is a woman full of hope and purpose.

She is accompanied by the Holy Spirit and, in my mind, seems to float in the direction and leading of the Spirit in her life. Some of us may readily picture a woman like this from our own lives, but for others, the idea of a person led so acutely by the Holy Spirit is an odd thought. A person coming and going and spouting truth to anyone surrounding them at a given time could be called a bit eccentric, to put it kindly. But, this prophet from the tribe of Asher finds her place in biblical history and points us to a life lived in expectation.

Anna, in her story, invites us to the same sort of expectation with which she lived her life. She models what healthy Christian discipleship can look like: some type of fasting, continual prayer, and sharing the good news with others. She helps us imagine what it could look like for us to rely solely on our Maker. It is a radical life that she lived, which issues to us a radical invitation to wait expectantly for the glory and goodness of God.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Please have a seat. Thank you, Mike. It was a pleasure to work with you in the United States Senate. And I want to thank you for your grace and your wisdom and your friendship. And, yes, we piled into that station wagon -- (laughs) -- going to church. So we have many things in common.

And, of course, it is an honor to be here with these members of Congress, with faith leaders from across our country, and of course, with our President, who is, as we all know, a leader of unending faith.

And the spiritual weight of it all has indeed been great. Our faith has indeed been tested. But it is that same faith -- our faith in God, our faith in humanity, and our faith in what is possible -- it is that same faith that I know has seen us through, that has helped us to see the light in one another.

You know, last March, I paid a visit to a food bank in Nevada. And the families there were waiting for hours at a time in their cars to receive a box of groceries. And when they drive up, the volunteers there would stand there, the driver would pop open the trunk, and the volunteer would put a box of food in the car.

And invariably, as the volunteers explained and they described it to me, in the middle of that empty trunk, the volunteer would see a handwritten note sitting in the trunk written out to the volunteers to thank them for their labor, for their work. The volunteers would describe that sometimes that trunk would pull -- pop open that empty trunk and there'd be a five- or a ten-dollar bill.

It is said a candle shines brightness and most brightly in the darkness. I believe the same is true of faith. And it is that faith that fuels me to say now and often as I do -- so many times -- that let us see, always guided by our faith -- let us be able to see what can be, unburdened by what has been.

And those words have deep spiritual roots for me. I grew up attending 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland, California. And one of the important places there is where I learned to believe in what is possible and that we each have the ability to achieve what is possible.

Nehemiah, as we all know, was neither a priest nor a prophet; he was a city official. After Jerusalem was burned and broken, Nehemiah told the people, "Let us rise up and build." And they did. Their faith allowed them to see what was possible and to see how to make it so.

So, I will end with a simple prayer: God, grant us faith, not only in you, but in one another. Let us be kind. Let us be generous. Let us be full of grace. Let us see the light in all your people and be guided by that light for all our days.

3a8082e126