In 2012 I listened to my pastor preach a sermon on turning your misery into your ministry. This jolted me and caused me to reevaluate how my life was going at the time. I was struggling spiritually because I was fighting anger, for changes on my job that led to an hour increase in my commute. I was still teaching but I wanted to move up to being a principal and I had lost my coaching job. Life was not going as I had planned.
I took the challenge. I emailed my pastor and asked him for the names of all the married couples in our church so I could start to pray over them as well as the church team and their children. He sent me fifty couples to start praying over. As I began praying over my list each day, God started to change my heart and my view on praying. I started researching every book I could get my hands on about prayer.
April 18, 2017, I started, at the request of a pastor’s wife, to lead five friends into scripture prayers, praying over their families. We prayed together faithfully for almost a year until the Holy Spirit told me to stop. Then in 2018, I started an email ministry of praying over two pastors with a group of about thirty people which would grow over time. Monday through Friday I would send out two email prayers, using scripture, praying over these pastors. During that time I started to see God move in ways I never expected. I also started to put together scripture prayers for different areas of life.
In 2019, my email list of thirty people grew to over 150 as I was invited by my denomination to pray for the pastors in my local conference. People joined with me to pray for pastors, church requests, and personal petitions that were sent to me.
Over these years, I compiled many scriptural prayers for different areas of life. These faithful prayers over the years laid the foundation for the book you’re holding in your hands.
Then on March 25, 2020, at 6 o’clock at night, I went to my study and found my youngest son dead from a gunshot wound to the head. I still don’t know if it was an accident or suicide, but I do know I had lost my miracle son who had just turned twenty-one, eight days earlier. I had no choice but to stop sending out prayers. I needed to take the time to find God and myself. I had to wrestle with my faith and process my grief with God. In the midst of that pain, God met me there.
In December of 2020, the Holy Spirit told me to start writing a scripture prayer from each book of the Bible. I was obedient and, eighteen days later, I was finished! Through this gradual healing process, I have started emailing prayers again. I even organized all my scripture prayers into packets and sent them out to see if anyone would publish them. God inspired me to send the prayers to be published.
I am launching this blog on March 25, 2021, in honor of my son, Philip Paul Bongard.
I pray that these Scripture prayers will not only assist you in learning to pray deeper but to also get you back into the Word of God.