The Power of a Praying Grandmother

Dr. Angela Powers’ grandmother, Mamie, passed away more the 20 years ago. But the spirit-filled prayers of protection, perseverance and strength she poured out over her granddaughter’s life remain a blessing not only over Powers and her ministry but over the men, women and children she impacts for the kingdom today.

As an ordained prophet of the New Era Apostleship Restitution Collaborative headed by Dr. Paula A. Price and the founder of the World Impact Institute, Powers mentors and develops prophets and intercessors, hosts gatherings for training and elevation in prayer and intercession as well as regional and municipal times of intensified extended corporate prayer.

She is the host of the FORCE Broadcast which airs weekly on Facebook, teaching and training praying people everywhere. She is also working to network a force of intercessors globally and to strategically deploy them municipally, regionally and nationally. Through the Power Prayer Zone Academy, she dispenses prayer education and prayer coaching. She also ministers itinerantly through the vehicle of AMP Ministries and is sought after to impact regions through her teaching, preaching and prayer.

Powers is the host of the Power Prayer Zone podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network and leads the 40-Day Master Shift Course, a 40-Day prayer journey that includes a daily downloadable prayer, a daily scripture guide and some additional mini-course prayer sessions.

Powers says none of that would be possible without the diligent Holy Spirit prayer covering Mamie placed over her from birth. It’s the only way she’s been able to overcome sickle cell anemia—a disease that should have taken her life by the age of 30, Powers says.

In fact, her grandmother’s prayers are the only reason she didn’t take her own life during childhood after displaying suicidal tendencies as early as age 6. And Spirit-filled prayers like those her grandmother prayed are the only reason she can get out of bed each morning, take care of her two special-needs sons and answer the tremendous calling God has thrust onto her.

“My grandmother’s prayer and the foundation of her example still carry me through life today,” Powers says. “I’m over 40 years old, and she laid a covering over me that has not lifted. Yes, I do have people now who are continually praying for me, but I can distinctly see the places where her prayer is still in operation for me.

“What my grandmother instilled in me through her model was a beautiful example of the reality of God’s hand in our world and how much He longs for us to all be like that,” she says. “She instilled in me the beautiful example of Jehovah as a brooder who longs to brood over us, our neighborhoods and our schools. She was that example of the God who longs to brood over us.

“It is the reality of knowing that’s what God wants that shapes who I am and shapes what I do,” Powers adds. “It becomes an immense part of what I go after, to awaken people to that.”

Spirit-Filled Grandmother

Powers’ parents divorced when she was a baby. Her father lived in Iowa and her mother in Missouri. Powers began attending a school in her grandmother Mamie’s neighborhood in Kansas City, and because of that, she spent a great deal of her childhood in Mamie’s care.

Powers learned early on what Mamie was all about and the influence she would have over her life.

“Most of the days of my elementary school life, I slept at my grandmother’s house and went to school each morning from my grandmother’s house,” Powers says. “And so I would wake up early in the morning using the bathroom and things of that sort, and I could just hear her singing hymns. It would just be filling the kitchen where she was, and God would just be so real. His presence and His weight in that house and therefore His peace upon my grandmother’s house would just be so immense.

“It was the most beautiful and yet peculiar thing,” Powers says. “When you’re a child, you are really just learning about this reality of God. So [it was wonderful] to live with someone who [gave me] such a value of how she started her day, and how she pulled in her resources and her needs. We didn’t live in the best neighborhood. Our block was beautiful because there were a lot of African American families that were from the older generation. It was almost like an oasis in a desert. So her prayer covering also spoke a lot into the safety of our home.”

Not surprisingly, it was Mamie, a missionary, who first introduced her granddaughter to church at First Baptist Church in Kansas City, Kansas.

“Because of her, you could say I was a church baby,” Powers says. “Because of her giving me that exposure to God’s Word in our church, she got me involved in something we called ‘The Welcome.’ Because she was a missionary, she trained me to go into the Bible for myself to find a Scripture that would help me to speak to visitors in our church.

“I realize now that the foundations of my capacity to teach and to preach—and to speak to people—came a lot from that grooming,” Powers says. “Because of her and that exposure that she gave, I did understand on some level what was unfolding when I would rise and hear her worshipping and praying in the morning.”

During this time in Powers’ early childhood, she began to experience physical pain. Doctors soon discovered and diagnosed her with sickle cell anemia, a chronic genetic disease that carries with it a short life-expectancy. In 1970, 30% of children born with sickle cell anemia were expected to die before their fifth birthday. And over 40 years ago, less than half of children born with the disease were expected to reach adulthood.

Mamie would instantly recognize those times when Angela began to experience pain, and she never hesitated to pray for her granddaughter, asking that the pain leave her body.

“She would lay hands on me, and the pain would dissipate,” Powers says. “The pain would just go away. That wasn’t wasted on me. I took that model into the entirety of my life. I know God hears us when we pray, and it’s by that faith that I live every day.”

“Sickle cell was the assignment of premature death, and the indictment was that I was not supposed to have kids,” Powers said. “With the duress your body is in, then neither you nor they are supposed to survive. But I knew, through my grandmother’s prayers over me, that the overriding potency of His blood would prevail. Jesus wanted me here, and I needed to be here.” Today, she has two sons whom she bathes in prayer every day, on her knees for God’s protection and wisdom, just as her grandmother prayed for her.

Powerful Prayer Ministry

Later in her life, many others realized the same thing Powers did: God wanted and needed her on this earth to deliver His Word and help others realize their importance in Christ.

Powers realized at age 19 that she had special calling on her life, and in college at Drake University, she began attending a Bible study. During the Bible study, she and her friends held regular prayer sessions, which grew in length every day.

During this time, Powers had regular encounters with the Holy Ghost and matured in the spiritual gifts God had given her.

“When that happens, because He is a prophetic spirit, He begins to really open up your faculties for hearing His concerns and for hearing God’s issues,” Powers says. “That’s when that process began to cultivate, which ultimately led me to a point where I was so drawn into hearing God’s voice, communing with God, knowing what His issues were, His dreams, His visions, knowing things that were getting ready to happen on the planet, knowing about how things were shifting with the church. …. It was like then I knew I needed training … I knew this was more than just a ministry calling.”

“This is when the Lord brought me across the path of Dr. Price, and I began to find out about the training programs that she had,” Powers says. “And there was an angel watching over me. I had called into a show she had for some counsel about something prophetic that had happened. At the end, there was some advertising and discussing the fact that they have these mentorship, training programs. An angel of the Lord told me I needed this training, and I said, ‘Yes, I’m going to do this.’

“That was the beginning of my journey with Dr. Price with her amazing learning systems that have groomed me as a prophet,” Powers says. “And now as the assistant chief prophet of her global prophetic company, and the supervisory prophet over her global intercessors and over the intercessors of her congregation, that training really gave me those missing puzzle pieces I didn’t have before. Once I identified I was a prophet, God began to give me the tools for how to carry out that mandate.”

Widely recognized as a strong international voice in apostolic and prophetic ministry, Price knew immediately that God would use Powers in a mighty way for His kingdom purposes.

“When I first met her, I said, ‘Oh, yeah, she’s a natural-born prophet,'” Price says. “I said, ‘She’s really going to be something.’ Angela is a phenomenal woman, and we have such extraordinary hopes for this woman. Her strength, her drive, her skills and her perseverance are impressive. She is a phenomenal intercessor, and she’s starting to get a lot of requests to help train intercessors. Angela has become this type of woman under extreme duress.

“I have trained a lot of people over the years, and I have heard just about every excuse about why someone can’t go on or why you can’t expect that person to deliver,” Price says. “Angela delivers over and above every time. She has been with us; she’s been through our training.

“Angela exhibits all of the qualities and traits of one who has been born and has been bathed and baptized in it,” Price says. “And then you know she is one who has been taken under the wing of the Holy Spirit. When you are listening to Angela, with her leadership and leadership skills, her talents, her ability to work her staff, and she keeps her peace, it’s incredible. Not a lot of people in the prophetic can keep their peace. She exhibits the maturity we need.

“I have a lot of hope for Angela’s future,” Price adds. “I am definitely convinced that she is a gift, and it’s a mirror to the body of Christ. My perception of Angela—as a leader, as a trainer—is that the world needs to look out, because she’s one of the best I’ve seen in a long time.”

God-Mandated Role

Powers will continue to be grateful for her grandmother’s intercession over her life. She knows full well that her life would have turned out much differently or that she might even be dead had she not had such a godly, Spirit-filled woman constantly praying over her.

It’s why she takes her role as intercessor, teacher and disciple seriously. She’s well aware of the perils young people face in this chaotic, ungodly world, and without an intercessor like the one she had, many will struggle, suffer the wrath of the enemy and face an eternal death sentence.

“We are living in a climate and a time where there are so many things being opened up, so much occultism—the music, the movies, the entertainment—and everything is evil,” Powers says. “You even try to go and get a delicious meal and it’s named after something that is really dedicated to hell. The climate has become so infiltrated with so many voices and so many spirits that the first thing we’ve got to do is to train our youth to distinguish the voice of God. They can’t have a voice until they know the voice of God. They’ve been carried off by other voices and other agendas.

“The church needs to build its stamina again and stand before God in intercession, because the darkness is taking its agenda very seriously,” she adds. “We need mothers and grandmothers to intercede for this next generation. If we’re to pray with all kinds of prayer, then that means that we also have to be able to stand before God, stand before His holiness and cry out for things that He cries out for.” {eoa}

Shawn A. Akers is a content development editor for Charisma Media.