Updates: (I overslept again--actually rested in the Lord and again invited Him to be the Lord of my day, so all is in His hands and according to His plans and timing and I have great peace. Even though I am 2 hours behind my schedule again, I am on His time and plan and know His peace. Amen!)
Please keep Barb Schware and her family in your prayers as her father stepped into the arms of Jesus last evening. He is now fully healed and restored. Pray for peace, comfort and strength for the journey.
Continue to pray for healing and provision for Darlene Skinner as she is awaiting word that she can go home. Pray for provision for her to be able to be at home. She is in good spirits and appreciates our prayers.
Continue to pray for Christ and Yvonne Muik. Chris is recovering from foot surgery and Yvonne is at home recovering from being sideswiped by a tractor trailer. pray for healing and provision for a car. I hope to visit them today.
Pray for all of our homebound members. Many are lonely. Reach out and love on some today!
PTL! We had a powerful time of ministry to a single mom during Bread Ministry yesterday. Gina and I spent much time hearing her heart and praying. Pray for God's favor and peace over Kim and her family. Pray He would draw the children.
We also had a great time of fellowship and discussion at our dinner huddle last night. We only have about three more weeks before we end our indoor gatherings. Pray for God to lead us out the door to some fun connection points to our neighbors. Ask God to lead you to something some of us can partner with you to connect to others and connect them to God.
Sat. from 10-1 is Clothing Closet. Pray for them to bless and connect to those God is sending.
Pray for me as I didn't even have time to begin Sun. Message yet. Pray for God's Word to come to me and alive to us. He is pursuing us with an everlasting, refining, maturing. patient love. PTL! Check out Our Daily Bread and Upper Room devotionals below as they may be part of Sunday's message as I believe God wants us to dig a little deeper and sink our roots deep into His love hat pursues us, refines us, prepares us and goes out from us.
Sunday evening from 5-8 is the first weekly worship service of Revival Church. They are renting our sanctuary. All are invited to join them on this special evening for their church. Karen and I hope to attend. Pray for this to be the beginning of a great ministry relationship with brothers and sisters in Christ that will multiply our impact on our neighborhoods!
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Good Morning Persevering, Persistent, Preparing Harvesters! Last night, yesterday, Tuesday during huddle, and actually, quite often lately we find our conversations moving to the end of time, That Great Day of the Lord, when Jesus returns. We find ourselves looking at the environment, society and happenings around us questioning if we are entering the tribulation. We certainly live in dark and evil times and earth quakes, famines, storms. pandemics, wars and rumors of wars are on the rise as should be expected because God revealed these would be signs that would increase in intensity as we approach the end. There are all kinds of speculations and interpretations of the happenings around us and the end times prophecies in the Bible. If history were recorded on a clock, we are probably in the last five minutes before the end. HOWEVER, we do not know and are not to put dates on things. We are to expect Jesus to return at anytime and not be surprised when He does and we are to keep on living, praying and serving as if it will be a few more thousands of years. Are you ready? Are you prepared to stand firm through some very very hard times? Do you have a network of friends that will walk with you through these hard times as you encourage, and help each other to stand firm? Is God's Word buried in your heart and your roots sunk deep into Him. Are you living and loving more and more like Jesus and serving others and making disciples of Jesus? That's how we are to live and we are to find and choose joy because, no matter what we face, He is with us and His love pursues us. Amen!
I don't want to be Donald Downer. But that is reality and it feels like this darkness is enveloping our world. BUT GOD! Remember, He warned us about this and Jesus reminds us, "I have overcome the world!" We know the end story and the Victor! PTL! Let us commit to encourage and spur each other on in our faith and service. Let us plan together how to impact our neighborhoods and change the world one person at a time. Let us continue to pray for revival and do our part. We will not change the world in the polling places, by arguing and attacking, but with love, service and care as we bring the love, hope and help of Jesus alive to those God is drawing out of the grasp of Satan. Pray for us to see, hear, follow, and be agents of revival. God has custom made, great plans for you and us for such a time as this. Let us be about our Father's business more earnestly as we see the end drawing near. Amen!
Two of my devos for today as well as Harvest prayer's blogs tie to this. Check them out. And then check out ODB and UR at the end as they may be part of Sunday's message. Don't forget, one of the most critical roles in God's Good News Delivery Co. is prayer warrior. We all can do and some of you are called to it and to pray like Anna! God has placed us together to build His Church and encourage and spur each other on. Sometimes we have blind spots that others can help us to see and correct. Find some trusted co-laborers and be intentional at meeting together. And never give up. Work on persevering faith and joy in the Lord to always be alive in and through you and us. Jesus is coming back some day and all the promises we have been given will come alive. Our faith will become sight! And then, in the twinkling of an eye, we will be with Jesus. Choose joy always and persevere in faith. Jesus is with you always and until He takes you home, there's work to do! Daylight's burning!
Charles Stanley: Blind Spots
TWFYT:
Harvest Prayer blogs:
April 18 - She Never Left
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And there was a prophetess, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years and had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple, serving night and day with fasting and prayers. At that very moment she came up and began giving thanks to God and continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. (Luke 2:36-39)
Some must have thought her strange. The aged widow, Anna, had virtually lived in the temple for decades. She served there, and her serving was amplified by continual fasting and unceasing prayer.
On a normal day—one of thousands for her—she was going about her routine in prayer and sensed an unusual presence. No doubt the atmosphere seemed strangely electrified.
Simeon, another temple regular, had the eyes to see because he had also sought the Messiah for years. Gazing upon this young boy, his heart was moved by the Spirit to announce that this was the Messiah for whom they had been waiting. Only God could have made him aware of this phenomenon.
Anna instantly knew. The Messiah, of whom the temple was merely a picture, had come.
“…she never left the temple” is an amazing phrase. Something in Anna’s heart caused her to continue in prayer. It was not merely her daytime routine. She prayed “night and day.” There could be no question that there were many other things she could have done. But something—or rather, Someone—kept drawing her back to the place of prayer.
Anna could have refused those promptings, but thankfully for us, she did not.
Precious Jesus, what an amazing event in biblical history – that two passionate intercessors were given the gift of seeing You, the long-awaited Messiah, with their own eyes after waiting so long and so expectantly! To think that I can know You just as personally is amazing. Keep me in the place of prayer, waiting expectantly for You to pour out revival on Your people, and looking to see You come again! May I place myself continually in Your presence, knowing that I will spend eternity being face to face with the One my heart adores!
---Adapted from Prayer with No Intermission by Bill Elliff. This book is available at prayershop.org.
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- Praise God for his world-sized love (Jn. 3:16)!
- Thank God for loving you before you ever began to love him (Rom. 5:8).
- Confess times of turning away from the Lord, acknowledging that such betrayal of his love is spiritual prostitution (Ezekiel 16).
- Commit yourself again to faithfulness in loving God.
- Ask him to help you live with purity of love toward him.
- Pray for the Bible studies and other small groups of your church. Ask God to work his kind of intimacy into the lives of each person involved with these groups.
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ODB:
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A 2017 video of a dad comforting his two-month-old son while the baby received his routine vaccinations garnered international attention for the way it captured a dad’s love for his child. After the nurse finished administering the vaccinations, the dad tenderly held his son close to his cheek, and the boy stopped sobbing within seconds. There’s almost nothing more reassuring than the tender care of a loving parent.
In Scripture, there are many beautiful descriptions of God as a loving parent, images that invoke God’s deep love for His children. Old Testament prophet Hosea was given a message to deliver to the Israelites living in the Northern Kingdom during the time of the divided kingdom. He called them to return to a relationship with God. Hosea reminded the Israelites of God’s love for them as he pictured God as a gentle Father: “when Israel was a child, I loved him” (Hosea 11:1) and “to them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek” (v. 4).
This same reassuring promise of God’s loving care is true for us. Whether we seek His tender care after a season where we’ve rejected His love or because of pain and suffering in our lives, He calls us His children (1 John 3:1) and His comforting arms are open to receive us (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
By Lisa M. Samra
REFLECT & PRAY
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How have you experienced the love of God as a caring Father? What concerns might you bring to Him today?
Heavenly Father, thank You that You call me Your child and provide tender care when I run to You.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Given Hosea’s assignment to demonstrate love, it should be no surprise that he’s been called “John (the apostle of love) of the Old Testament.” God told Hosea to “go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods” (Hosea 3:1). Descriptors for this kind of love include words like relentless, ceaseless, loyal, unconditional. It’s a pursuing love; one that releases one from slavery and bondage (11:1), pursues those who stray (v. 2), and accompanies its objects in various stages of development because they’re loved (vv. 3-4). Believers in Jesus are no strangers to God’s tender love. The one who “demonstrate[ed] his own love for us . . . while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8) is the one who loves us enough to pursue us when we stray (see Hebrews 12:5-6).
Arthur Jackson |
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UR: Waving at the Window
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. - Revelation 3:20 (NIV)
I always had the duty of dropping our kids off at daycare, which is more emotionally difficult than my husband’s duty of picking them up. My children didn’t like being left, and many mornings were filled with tears. It also didn’t help that our daycare was across town from where I worked, so I was inevitably always in a rush.
One morning, I was hurrying out of the daycare to my car, when something caught my eye. In a window facing the parking lot stood my two-year-old son waving excitedly at me. It was a sweet gesture and just what I needed. I told everyone at work how sweet my son was.
The next morning, when dropping my son off, I mentioned to the teacher how my son had made me smile the day before. She kindly told me that he does that every morning and had been doing so for months. My heart sank.
I never missed his wave after that.
This experience made me wonder how many times I have missed signs of God’s love because I was too rushed to notice. Praise the Lord, we are loved by a God who is patient and whose love never ends.
TODAY'S PRAYER
Dear God, forgive us when we don’t notice all the ways you love us. Thank you for patiently waiting on us and for loving us unconditionally. Amen.
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