Praying Women Study Guide: How to Pray When You Don't Know What to Say
By Sheila Walsh
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About this ebook
Sheila Walsh
Sheila Walsh is a powerful communicator, Bible teacher, and bestselling author with almost six million books sold. She is the author of the award-winning Gigi, God’s Little Princess series, It’s Okay Not to Be Okay, Praying Women, Holding On When You Want to Let Go, and more. She is cohost of the inspirational talk show Life Today with James and Betty Robison, which is seen worldwide by a potential audience of over 100 million viewers. Sheila lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, Barry, and son, Christian, who is in graduate school.
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Praying Women Study Guide - Sheila Walsh
© 2020 by Sheila Walsh
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2656-0
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled AMP are from the Amplified® Bible (AMP), copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org
Scripture quotations labeled AMPC are from the Amplified Bible, Classic Edition. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled NKJV are from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Study written by Ashley Wiersma, with additional material by Sheila Walsh
Based on and with material from Praying Women by Sheila Walsh.
The Holy Spirit wants to teach us how to pray and also show us that it’s not as complicated as we’ve made it.
introduction, Praying Women
Contents
Cover 1
Title Page 2
Copyright Page 3
Epigraph 4
From One Praying Woman to Another 7
Session 1: Starting Where You Are 9
Our Prayer to God: Help Me!
Session 2: The Practice of Persistence 23
Our Prayer to God: Hear Me!
Session 3: Believing for the Unbelievable 35
Our Prayer to God: Heal Me!
Session 4: Trusting God over the Long Haul 44
Our Prayer to God: Free Me!
Session 5: The Proximity Principle 55
Our Prayer to God: You Are Near.
Session 6: Praying God’s Word Back to Him 64
Our Prayer to God: You Are Powerful.
Session 7: Suiting Up 75
Our Prayer to God: You Are My Protection.
Session 8: All Rise 86
Our Prayer to God: You Have Won!
Notes 96
Back Cover 97
From One Praying Woman to Another
Dear friend,
Over the last two years, there has been one thing burning in me, heart and soul: a call to prayer. But this call has not been for me alone; it’s a call for all God’s daughters to pick up one of the most powerful weapons we have: prayer. So often we turn to prayer as a last resort after we’ve done everything we can, but I believe it should be the first place we turn.
Perhaps prayer is intimidating to you and you struggle to find the right words. Perhaps you’ve stopped praying because it seems to make no difference. Or perhaps you are simply overwhelmed and worn out. I understand all these emotions. More importantly, so does our Father.
Wherever you find yourself today, I want to remind you that God is not looking for the right words, just a willing heart.
So let’s dive in together and rise up stronger. When God’s daughters fall on their knees to pray, the battle is not over; it is just beginning.
Your sister and friend,
Sheila
The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.
James 5:16
SESSION 1
Starting Where You Are
Our Prayer to God: Help Me!
I’d promised to be perfect, to never disappoint God, and here I was, on my face on the floor, empty. The only words I silently prayed were these: Help me.
chapter 1, Praying Women
I prayed to the Lord, and He answered me. He freed me from all my fears.
Psalm 34:4
Help me!
Those were the words I cried out in pain when I had come to the end of myself. I’d spent so many years trying to be the perfect Christian woman, to never fail God, yet here I was on the floor, in a small room in a psychiatric hospital, feeling as if my life was over. That was over twenty-five years ago. What I would go on to discover is that when we are at the end of who we are, we are just at the beginning of who God is. Starting where you are right now may feel hopeless and impossible, but when you invite God into that space, you will see that it’s actually an open door into all God has for you.
Are you in a help me
place right now? You’re so overwhelmed that the only prayer you can muster up is Lord, please help me!
Even then it can feel more like throwing up a white flag of surrender than a genuine cry for help. Let’s face it, we are stretched so thin these days that prayer is often the last few words we utter before falling exhausted into bed. We want to spend more time in prayer during the day, but our to-do list gets longer every week, and let’s be honest; life is stressful. To be alive today is to be acquainted with stress. There is good stress, like welcoming a new child or moving into a new home or job, but when most of us hear the word stress, it’s not the joy-filled kind that comes to mind. It’s the overwhelming, soul-crushing kind. Let me list just a few and see which ones you most relate to.
There are