Linda Evans Shepherd - Empowered for Purpose: Winning Your Daily Spiritual Battles

For we are Gods masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

Ephesians 2:10 NLT

I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness. Was someone calling my name?

I threw back my covers and bolted to my daughters room. I found Laura in her bed, pale and unable to breathe. Soon my driveway glowed with the rotating lights of a fire truck and ambulance as emergency workers hurried to whisk my disabled child to the hospital.

After they admitted Laura into the ICU with a life-threatening pneumonia, I stood by her side and prayed over her until morning when a friend arrived so I could go home to rest. But when I laid my head on my pillow, it was as if the last twenty-seven years of my life melted into a single moment of shock.

In my dream life, I was once again crawling out of the broken window of the smashed car. I was once again running down the freeway searching for my baby in the aftermath of the car crash. I was once again feeling the shock of finding my baby in her car seat in the middle of the freeway. It took only one look and I knew. My baby had been changedforever.

My heart pounded me awake, and the realization hit me hard. After all these years, my daughter was once again in the ICU fighting for her life.

I pressed my tears into the covers and prayed the most powerful prayer I knew: Lord, please hide my daughter in you. Hide her from the one who would take her life. I put her into your armor: your helmet of salvation, your breastplate of righteousness, your belt of truth. I put Laura into the shoes of the gospel of peace and cover her with your shield of faith, which will deflect all the arrows of the enemy. I take up the sword of the Spirit, which is your Word made alive in your Spirit, and I pray for her life. Lord, my daughter belongs to you, but I cannot help but ask, Could you once again spare her life?

God heard and answered my prayer, and though Lauras life hung in the balance for several days, she was released from the hospital and is continuing to do well. Praise God!

The prayer I prayed for my daughter illustrates the incredible secret of this book, the secret of how to pray with Gods empowerment for protection, victory, and purpose through the armor of God. But before I begin to unwrap this secret of how to win your daily spiritual battles, I want to ask you an important question. Have you ever been surprised when something in your life went wrong?

So have I.

I mean, if God really loves us, why do we face trouble? Is there something we are missing? An important secret that would help us have victory over our trials?

It is hard to believe now, but when I was a child, I somehow lived in a protective bubble, sheltered from the horrors of tragedies, hate, and difficulties. But bubbles can only float so far before they burst. When they do, they evaporate into thin air as if they never existed.

I was fifteen when my world exploded with the news of the death of my twelve-year-old cousin from a brain aneurism. The funeral was on my sixteenth birthday. I sat in the church pew with my family and wondered why God hadnt protected my cousin from death. I also wondered why we, her family, were left with her memory instead of the child herself. Sure, I knew she was in heaven, but how I wanted her to be with us on Earth. Didnt God care that we were all heartbroken? I listened as my family sang the chorus to that old hymn: