By Matt Brown

God not only wants to save our souls, He wants to use our lives.

If you’ve been redeemed by Jesus, He does an amazing work inside of you that literally alters the course and trajectory of your life. By default, you become part of God’s great rescue mission to the world. You are meant to receive the love of Jesus, and you are meant to share the love of Jesus with a world that so desperately needs Him.

I don’t know about you, but ever since I was a young kid, I have had a voracious passion in my heart to know God more, and for God to use my life for His purposes. This has been a prayer: both spoken and unspoken in my heart. Sometimes the deep groaning of my heart has been too deep for words. I don’t want to spend my life for my own purposes, but that God might use me greatly for His Kingdom.

If this is your prayer too, if you long for God to use your life for His great purposes, here are 4 powerful prayers you can pray on a regular basis for God to use you:

1. “Lord, let me make a difference for you that is utterly disproportionate to who I am.”

David Brainerd uttered this prayer in his journals. As a missionary in New England to Native Americans, the great passion of his heart was to spread the gospel to people who needed to know the love and power of God.

Does your heart long to help others know the love and power of God? Pray this prayer often, and make it your own.

2. “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory!”

This was the prayer of an obscure man in the Bible named Jabez. His prayer was made famous in recent times in a powerful book by Bruce Wilkinson, called “The Prayer of Jabez.”

Jabez full prayer was simple, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.” (1 Chronicles 4:10)

Such a simple prayer, but sometimes we forget to make our requests known to God. God loves to answer our prayers, and He loves to help us. Take this prayer, and use it often.

3. “Ask me, and I will make the nations an inheritance for you”

Psalm 2:8 gives us this challenge, “Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.”

Only ask.

God delights to give us the desires of our hearts, as we delight ourselves in Him. God takes very good care of His children. He works on His timeline, not our own, but His ways are always higher and better, surprising and astonishing.

Many believers translate this verse to mean we should pray for the salvation of the nations of the earth. Ultimately it is Jesus who will get the nations as an inheritance that they might know Him.

This is a powerful reminder to pray for the nations of the world, who are under so much tyranny and turmoil right now — that God might save them, and move on them, and show His glory all over the world. Don't just pray for your city, pray for the nations of the earth.

4. “Lord, help me to accomplish your purposes for my life in my generation.”

A profound statement is found in Acts 13:36, and when you read it you will never be the same. It says, “For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed.”

David served and accomplished God’s purpose for his life in his own generation.

Each of us only gets one life, one chance, one set of time. When we die, it is gone. We have a high calling, and God has a purpose for us to serve in our own generation. Just like David.

So ask the Lord, “Help me to accomplish Your great purposes in my generation.”

I hope these prayers can inspire and propel you toward the greater things God has for you. May God bless and use your life. May He enable you to walk holy and faithfully toward the purposes He has for you. May He give you the heart of a servant, and the vision to see greater things accomplished for His Name. Amen.

Matt Brown is an evangelist, author of Truth Plus Love, host of Think Eternity with Matt Brown, and founder of Think Eternity — a ministry sharing powerful faith content through podcasts, blogs, videos, outreaches and more. Matt and his wife Michelle have three children.