How to Pray the Promises
Dec 18, 2025
Hi, I'm Julie Hawkes. Welcome to The Laws of Peace, where you will learn how to understand and apply God's laws in simple ways so that you can take small steps to create big miracles and changes and become the person you are always meant to be.
The answers are in the scriptures. Let me show you how to find them. Today's episode is called How to Pray the Promises.
This is the second in our series on The Law of Promises. And The Law of Promises basically states that God keeps his promises all the time, 100% of the time, no exceptions.
And when we understand that, that can help us to be strong enough to have and have faith enough to get through our challenges and trials when the evidence is all around us that things aren't going to work out.
And it can also help us to create miracles in our lives. So let's dive in. I want to start with the story of the Battle of Jericho.
And we're gonna start in Joshua 6 verse two. There's a really important principle here. And the Lord said into Joshua, See, I have given into thy hand Jericho and the king thereof and the mighty men of Valor.
Now that's really interesting that he says that because when he's talking to Joshua, he hasn't done that at all. He hasn't, the walls are still up. The bad guys are still behind them.
But the Lord is pointing out something as if it had already happened because he made a promise and we can trust God's promises. Mark Batterson in his book, The Circle Maker teaches us how to pray promises. We'll be talking about him more.
But he really tells a story wonderfully. I'm going to quote him as he explains it. He says, Your entire army is to march around the city once a day for six days.
On the seventh day, you are to march around the city seven times. In keeping with God's commands, they didn't say a word for six days. They just silently circled the promise.
Then the priest sounded their horns, and a simultaneous shouts followed. 600,000 Israelites raised a holy roar that registered on the Richter scale, and the walls came tumbling down.
After seven days of circling Jericho, God delivered on a 400-year-old promise. End quote. What an amazing story.
I'm going to show you though that there's a pattern in the scriptures of obtaining a promise, or talking about a promise before it ever happens. Let's go to 1st Nephi chapter 5.
This is where the Nephi and his brothers have disappeared to go get the brass plates, and they didn't come home on time. And Saraiah and Lehi are actually fighting.
And it's refreshing to see that even a prophet and his wife sometimes disagree and have fights. They have problems just like the rest of us, they're normal people. And they're actually fighting about the boys.
Saraiah is scared out of her mind, and rightly so, because her boys never came back. And she called Lehi a visionary man, and this was his response. Well, first he validated her and said, you're right, I am a visionary man.
And then he said this, he said in verse five, but behold, I have obtained a land of promise, in the which things I do rejoice.
Yea, and I know that the Lord will deliver my sons out of the hands of Laban and bring them down again unto us in the wilderness. Um, no, he hasn't. They are sitting in the sand fighting.
Their boys are missing. They don't have the brass plates.
But because he saw what the Lord wanted him to see, and he had claimed that promise into his heart, and he knew that God kept his promises, he was able to be able to look beyond the moment of distress and crisis and go, wait a minute, God's going to
come through for us. And that helped him to hold on and to rally his wife. So that she could also hold on until their boys returned with the brass plates. Let's look at another one.
In Mosiah 16 verse 6, this is a benedict and he is speaking to King Noah and his wicked, wicked priest. And he says something fascinating.
He says this, And now if Christ had not come into the world, now remember, Christ isn't going to come for another 600 years or something.
And now if Christ had not come into the world, speaking of things to come as though they had already come, there could have been no redemption. I love this idea of speaking of things to come as if they had already come.
That's what happened in Jericho. That's what happened with Nephi. And we can probably find 10 other scriptures that explain that same principle, that same pattern.
And so we need to find those promises in our own life and speak about them and believe in them as if they had already come. If you believe the promises in your life were already going to happen, how would you behave today?
How would you show up differently? Something interesting to think about.
4:43
Faith Secures Promises
So how do we obtain the promise? Actually the brother of Jared explains it and talks about it in either chapter 12.
In either chapter 12, actually it might be Moroni, but in either chapter 12, we read about all these people that had all of this faith.
It starts out talking about all these people who had faith and it talks about Ammon and all of these great, wonderful people. But then it says something really, really important in verses 17 and 18.
It says, and it was by faith that the three disciples obtained a promise. Now, remember, are we clear on obtain a promise? That's getting God to tell you what's going to happen before it happens.
He's like, look, I'm going to keep this promise to you. That's obtain a promise. And it was by faith that the three disciples obtained a promise that they should not taste of death.
And they obtained not the promise until after their faith. And neither anytime had they brought any miracles until after their faith. Wherefore first they believed in the Son of God.
So faith is required. We need to have faith. We need to believe that just like when Joshua was standing in front of these giant walls with the enemies behind it, that God said, well, look, I gave you Jericho.
Or when Lehi and Saraiah are standing there fighting and they're scared because the boys are missing and they don't have the brass plates, then they go, but wait a minute, we're already, we already have the promised land.
6:04
Praying Promises Framework
Mark Batterson said that there's over 3,000 scriptures or 3,000 promises in the Bible and we have access to all of them. So how do we obtain the promise? First, we need to realize where promises can be found.
Promises are everywhere. Promises, we can hear the promises from the prophets, from the apostles. In fact, President Nelson was famous for giving promises, so many promises.
And as we read and study the talks of the prophets and the apostles, we can get more information on the promises that are available to us.
They are found in our patriarchal blessings, they're found in priesthood blessings, they're found in personal revelation, and they are certainly found in the scriptures. And that's where I want to focus today.
The first question though that we need to ask ourself is, what is your Jericho? What is it that you want? Here are some of the phrases that the Savior has asked in scripture.
What will ye that I should do? What is it that you desire of me? What desirest thou?
What seek ye? What will ye that I should do? Cory Coliver in his talk, What Desirous Thou?
And it's a BYU speech. He said, when he asked the question, it is not for his information, it is for our transformation.
The question invites us to look inward, to think a little deeper and consider what, why and what we truly seek and what we most desire. When Jesus asked the question, he already knew the answer. End quote.
See, the challenge is, and Mark Batterson really speaks to this, that how can God give you what you want if you don't even know what you want? I think that's the first piece is, is that we really need to understand and know what it is that we want.
What miracle are we looking for? What do we want to accomplish? What is it that we need help with?
And we need to clarify that first. And we also need to understand what God's will is for us in our life. And that also can be done through prayer.
So the next step, once we have an idea of what we want, is we want to open our scriptures and read. And I always like to do this with a prayer and then asking, you know, what is it that I need to know about this?
In fact, I actually did this this morning in my scriptures. As I'm looking towards the new year and what it is that I would like to accomplish, I went to the Lord with it. I'm like, look, this is what I want.
Is there a promise or is there something that I need to know about this that will help me? And I actually turned to Luke chapter 11 and it said, asking you shall receive, knock and it shall be given unto you, seek and you shall find.
I'm like, ah, isn't that interesting? So then I can do a deeper dive into, okay, well, what does it mean to ask? Well, how do I seek?
Well, what action steps do I need to take? But we'll talk about that in a second. I'm getting ahead of myself.
So first, you want to open the scriptures with a question about the thing that you're worried about, about the miracle you need in your life, about the promise that was already promised, whatever it is.
And you want to read slowly, watching for anything that stands out, that lights you up, that touches you, anything that you just kind of highlights, if you will. Scripture is God's side of the conversation. Next, you want to circle the promise.
So when a verse stands out, you want to stop, you literally want to circle it, you want to write in your margins why this is important, you want to journal about it. And here are three questions you can ask yourself about this.
What does this promise say about God? What does he want me to believe or do? And then what am I asking him to do based on this promise?
Isn't this just beautiful stuff to journal? Because now you're getting a lot of clarity and you're getting inspiration and revelation from the Lord. And then the next step is that we pray the promise.
And we pray the exact words of the scripture back to God, but in our situation. Just recently, I was actually doing this.
I had a child that was struggling so much and I knew I needed to respond, but I had no idea how to respond to their distress text message. And so I prayed the promise in Doctrine and Covenants, chapter 100, verses 5 and 6.
It talks about how God will give you exactly what to say in the moment and exactly how to say it and that you won't be confounded before men. And I prayed then. I said, Look, Heavenly Father says it right here.
It says that this will happen and I need this promise right now. Please bless me with the ability to say what is most important and will be most beneficial and give me those words that I need.
And then I was able to write a text message that was very beneficial to this person who was struggling. And so we can pray the promises. It's a real thing and it's a very effective way to make things happen in our life.
10:38
Persistence in Prayer
And we need to remember that the promises don't always happen immediately, that sometimes they take time. And that's the next part of it. The last part is that we need to persist until the promise is ours.
We need to keep circling the promise every day until our heart changes, until peace comes, until faith builds, or until the Holy Ghost shifts our focus. I want to tell you about something that happened to me 25 years ago. My brother passed away.
I know many of you are familiar with this story. He died in a drowning accident, and his wife was expecting their first baby, and he was 23. And that was a really difficult experience for me.
It was a catalyst for everything in my life to fall apart. There were some other challenges that we were facing as a family. My husband and I and our children, I had four small children at the time, and I just completely had a breakdown.
I completely fell to pieces, and I could not be left alone. My anxiety was so bad that I would just sit on my little fireplace. I had a little fireplace ledge in my living room, and I would just sit on that and just cry all day long.
And someone had to come in and help me take care of my kids, and I just was non-functioning.
And I went to the doctor and got a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder and some medicine, and I started some therapy, and I started to get back up on my feet.
And during this time, as I was in so much distress, my husband gave me several priesthood blessings, and in every one of them, he said, You will be healed.
And I was frustrated because I spent the next 17 years figuring out anxiety and what causes it and how to figure it out and what works and what doesn't and all of those things. And my healing was very, very gradual. It didn't happen overnight.
I didn't wake up the next day, and all of a sudden I felt better. And I have so many stories about each piece of that healing process.
And even today, I am still continuing to do and make progress on those things that are creating a deeper healing in my life where I'm just more settled, more calm, more happy.
And it's happened over the years, but it's been as step by step, line upon line, precept upon precept. And that's one of the laws that I've learned about how God works in our life.
That because we live in such an immediate world with social media and we can get any information we need instantly. And so we want instant results.
And while there are those times when God gives us instant miracles, He does, and I'm sure you've seen them in your life. A lot of times the law is that it's line upon line, precept upon precept, here, there, here a little, there a little.
And so our miracles come a little bit at a time and they take time. And in the waiting is where we have faith. And that faith can bring us a lot of peace and a lot of hope.
And so I just want to remind you that it is worth it to put in the effort to understand the promises and to receive the miracles.
President Nielsen, in his talk, said you can seek and expect miracles and do the spiritual work to seek and expect miracles. And this is one way to do that work. And that's what makes it so exciting, is it's a framework, it's something we can try.
And so, I invite you to try this framework, to find the promises, to hold to the promises, to pray the promises, and see how that builds your faith and helps you to create the miracles in your life. Thank you so much for being here.
If you have loved this podcast, will you please share it with somebody that you know and love? Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.
