A few months ago, I sat beside my ninety-five-year-old mother’s hospital bed.
Dim lighting highlighted her beautiful face. Because dementia has taken so much of her away from me, I felt thankful I could view her wrinkles as well-earned character lines revealing so much more than her age. To me, each one illustrated the story of a woman whose prayers for daily strength in times of weakness continue to prove powerful.
In those quiet moments of thanking God for the gift of the woman who raised me, modeling cast-iron-kind-of-strength, I pondered how best to hold on to the essence of her. How do I best fully absorb, preserve, and honor my mother’s godly example that continues to inspire and fill me and my family with strength knowing that beyond a compromised mind, faith has remained uncompromised.
Maybe you weren’t raised by a mother like mine. Maybe your guiding examples weren’t very positive or encouraging. Even if that is the case, you can pray for God’s strength to fill you like life-giving water so that you too may be a godly influence in someone else’s life. Your own private prayers for strength today can produce an incredibly powerful public influence—in every season of life.
After seeing my momma, I now understand how someone so physically weak, lying in her hospital bed, could be so strong. And even from her prone posture, with her mental acuity waning, she is still teaching me life’s most important lessons. This faith-filled prayer warrior who taught me the importance of going to God for strength before life falls apart is teaching me that when you have forgotten things you can’t imagine forgetting, your love for the Lord can hold fast.
Much like an Olympic athlete, her strength was years in the making. Her resilience is a product of a diligent commitment to faithfully pursuing the Lord; when she failed to understand, or didn’t have answers for life’s unexpected happenings, she knew God did.
And in the shadowy darkness of her room, with heart monitors tracking her current condition, my grateful heart tracked powerful memories to times when I’d witnessed her godly courage and strength in action: after the loss of her parents, her three siblings, a son to cancer, five grandchildren, and her one true love of fifty-six years and most of her friends she’d known throughout her life.
And suddenly it hit me—the prayers we pray over a lifetime, prayers for courage and moxie, result in having a deep well of strength in the Lord to draw from when we need it most.
What an honor it is to witness her never-give-up kind of strength during a few of her weakest, most painful and vulnerable moments of life.
And as if this special night of remembrance and revelation couldn’t surprise me more, out of a sound sleep, my memory-challenged mother began to whisper the most powerful prayer for strength that Jesus had encouraged his disciples to pray before ascending to heaven after the crucifixion:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:9–13).
Friend, we too can begin our spiritual training today for success in tomorrow’s race. The best preparation is to pursue God’s heart in prayer, read His word, and walk in the strength God gifts to us. I marvel that these had not gone void when mom’s mind had. Like a lifegiving fountain bubbling up from within her, the mind of Christ continues instructing hers how to pray.
Friend, God’s Word is so powerful it will never leave us:
“So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11).
And in the middle of that magical night, I found it staggering to see how a tiny seed of courageous faith firmly planted in a woman’s heart will continue producing fruit to the end of her days.
I want to be that kind of woman.
What about you, friend?
Remember These Things:
- The Lord’s Prayer is a beautiful prayer to pray when words won’t come or our hearts feel too weary with concerns. Jesus give His disciples, and us, that example of prayer.
- The Lord’s Prayer is a powerful prayer of surrender, acknowledging God as Father and asking for His will to be done.
- Praying might not change our problems immediately, but it does change our heart posture.
- You can be a woman of strength and prayerful influence who becomes a guiding force to the benefit of others, regardless of your upbringing or the influences you had.
- Praying for strength equips us with invisible Holy Spirit-superpowered capes to keep moving though blustery winds of change and looking ahead to the unknown tomorrows with hope in our hearts.
- God will faithfully gift us the right portion of strength for each day’s circumstantial need.
- One of the Hebrew meanings for strength is grace. What a beautiful gift God gave to us when He sent His one and only Son, Jesus, to die on the cross in our place. (See John 3:16.)
- When Jesus died and gifted us new life in Him, He was actually gifting us His strength.
- Jesus saw from the cross every struggle we will ever face and provided heaven’s superpower (strength) to resist sin and live powerful, prayer-filled lives—for our whole lives.
“That is why for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (1 Corinthians 12:10 NIV).
Father, I pray every beautiful daughter reading this will embrace the grace God offered at the cross and choose His supernatural strength when we are powerless in ourselves. Amen.
LaTan Roland Murphy is a lover of people and strong coffee. She is a sought-after speaker and award-winning writer who finds encouraging others her passion and purpose. Speaking with candid humility and raw honesty, LaTan draws from her own real-life mistakes and failures, inspiring audiences with hilarious personal stories. She and her husband, Joe, recently celebrated thirty-eight years of marriage. They will be the first to tell you they are still growing up together. She and Joe have three adult children: two sons and a daughter. They are blessed to have a loving son-in-law and daughter-in-law who feel more like biological children. In her spare time LaTan enjoys spending time with her three grandchildren, who totally captivate her heart. Author of: Courageous Women of the Bible.