I am very honored that OW has asked me to post a blog in her stead. I pray her vacation is a very blessed one. I am posting this before midnight MT as my hubby informed me I have to get up very, very earlier and I don't think I will have time to do it before we leave or rather, I'll be walking in my sleep and who knows what could happen. Thank you for understanding.

Travailing Prayer isn’t something that you can muster up on your own; only God births travail. Lately I have found myself in great times of travail over my children, especially over my "prodigals". Like many Christian parents I know I am not alone in this area. It is an area that I find very painful. I really just don't get it, but maybe I am not supposed to. I do want my children to have their own faith in the Lord, not my faith.

I see many children grow up with their parents faith and when they leave home they become extremely rebellious and confused because they don't have a personally relationship with Christ. I can honestly say that my kids didn't become really rebellious but they are looking, searching for the Lord in their own way and at times it seems they are looking in all the wrong places, justifying their lifestyle or rationalizing bad decisions. As a parent, I pray, I travail on their behalf.

As a parent I want to help them, rescue them, but they are adults and need to develop their own faith in God, their own relationship with God and I know once found, they will be the stronger for it. I have also been travailing over issues that are plaguing our nation. God puts different kinds of burdens on different people. At times when I go to certain blogs the Lord may have me travail over that person or their child who needs prayer.

Travail: to birth or a birthing anointing (without travail we will not birth anything); to bear, to have a conception and then deliver it; to be troubled. To toil and writhe in pain; to feel a weight upon you. It is a type of burden bearing. Lamentations 3: 12 & 13 says: “He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrow. He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver.”

We can mistake travail for depression. You may not know what the travail is about until you yield to it. God is calling people to travail in prayer: “The Lord will march out like a mighty man, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal..." Isaiah 42:13-14. Elijah travailed for the birthing of rain, 1 Kings 18: 41-45.

Travail brings forth the very purpose of God, Romans 8:22-26. Jesus travailed in the Garden of Gethsemane: “And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” Luke 22: 44. This travail that Jesus experienced was prophesied in Isaiah 53:11. The travailing prayers of Jesus are mentioned in Hebrews 5:7. What we must remember is that Jesus was travailing for us, on our behalf. Can we do less? When you enter into travailing prayer, stay with it until the burden is lifted because there is something God wants to birth. “I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain… but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that the child is born into the world” John 16:20-21.

This week many churches across the nation are asking their people to pray and fast for our nation. I do believe that God is calling his children to travail more now than ever before. Be alert, heed God's call and pray without ceasing.







Kathleen Marie, Stranded in the Mountains