Pray and Never Give Up

Luke 18:1 says "One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up."

This was the theme for Monday Night Prayer this week.  Pray and never give up.

Just coming to pray encourages us.  There is something that happens every week at our corporate prayer times.  People come up to me afterward and say something like "I came in tonight feeling blaaa and now I am pumped up again, or I was feeling so discouraged and now I have hope or I was dealing with this "thing" and now I know God is going to take care of it."  There is an element about people coming together with expectation and meeting with the King of the Universe that changes us. 

We pray for others, we pray for our services, we pray for missions in other countries, we pray for our own families and in the midst of all of this God changes us.  For me it is like coming to the well and getting a drink and being refreshed.  Connecting with Jesus in prayer and taking part in this divine relationship does something in us as well as through us.  Another picture I have of prayer is that it connects us with the river of God.  We begin to know what He is interested in and how he wants to handle various situations.  We are not relying on our own solutions.  We are encouraged to find God solutions to our lives.

Disciples should always pray and not give up.  There are hopeless situations we find ourselves in or our friends in.  Jesus encourages us to always pray.  When things don't immediately change we can have a tendency to give up.  We say often, prayer puts Gods super into our natural.  Sometimes that takes time and at other times exact timing is involved. 

After a moving worship set by the Elife Band, we moved on to pray. We prayed for Keith Beasley who was in an accident last year and has been in a coma since then.  His wife and son are left to carry on without Keith with them.  An impossible situation but God can use in great ways.

We also prayed for marriages last night.  Gods grace is not just for some marriages.  God will give his grace in any marriage situation.  We prayed that God would put His super into every specific natural situation of marriages.

We prayed for those who had walls up and could not sense the Fathers love.  Those that struggled with self hate.  We prayed God would break down any of those walls.

We also took time to pray for various missionaries on the mikes tonight.  We had about 10 - 12 people come up and do that.

We believe we are changing history one prayer at a time.
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17 first time commitments this past weekend.  God continue to bring people into your kingdom.