Prayer

Dear Weekly Readers!

May the peace of God be with you today! 

Today I bring a very special prayer request before you, asking that you would sincerely pray for a dear pastor who is suffering terribly with an unknown health problem.  Pastor Sylvester in Kenya has a growth on and in the back of his head that is growing and causing many problems.  Pastor Sylvester knows the Bible perhaps better than any person I have ever met.  He is such a wonderful man and is so faithful in the Lord’s vineyard. 

Dear Lord, hear our prayers for this wonderful man!  We want to see him again, not only in heaven, but also in his country of Kenya. 

Please, dear readers, if you can help financially for this dear pastor, let me know by emailing me at foreignmission@comcast.net.

   

There are so many issues and problems in this world.  Also, please remember to pray for one of the Foreign Mission board members and his family.  Two of his young daughters, ages 14 and 16, were in a terrible auto accident last week.   One of the girls is still in very serious condition.   Let us pray for the girls of Shane and Patti Juuti.   For those of you who have been visited by either Carl Niemitalo or Richard Juuti, these are their grandchildren. 

 For this week, let us look into scripture about this topic of prayer.

1 Thessalonians 5:17
Pray without ceasing.

Let us continually pray.  We understand and know that we must do our work, we must eat, sleep and do many other things in this life.  Still, the Bible says pray without ceasing.  Let us be in a continual state of knowing that God is over all, that Jesus is on the right hand of God, praying in our behalf.  Let us always be subject to the will of God, to His power over our lives!  Let us be humble, never demanding, yet present with the Lord, knowing that He is above all and in all!  When we possess the Holy Spirit, the comforter, then we can begin to understand how we could possibly pray without ceasing, because God Himself in the form of the Holy Spirit lives within us doing such things.

 James 5:16
Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

Have you ever felt your prayers do not work?  The Bible says otherwise in the above verse when it says it availeth much!     Let us believe this by faith.

   

Let us pray one for another.   It is so easy, it seems, to forget this, or to spend our time trying to make gains against one another. When we are praying for one another, it is so very much harder to hold ill will toward each other.  Prayer brings us together in Christ, who is our healer and is the great Physician!

 How did the Apostles feel about prayer? Acts 6:4
But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.

Let us follow their example and carry on as they did.

Jesus taught us how to pray.  He prayed the Lord’s prayer and He instructed in John 15:16
 ….. that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

We see many other examples of Jesus praying in the Bible, such as in Matthew 14:23

And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.

Jesus went away to pray.  Jesus is Almighty and All Powerful!  Yet, He needed to pray.  Let us take this as a lesson to us on the importance of prayer.  Many times Jesus went away alone to pray.  He prayed so earnestly for you and me in the Garden of Gethsemane that in Luke 22:44  it tells us:

And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Thank you, dear Lord, for giving us such a wonderful and beautiful example of prayer, and for showing us how much you have loved us!

 

Let us take this to our very own hearts and love one another as the scripture instructs.  John 13:34-35

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

James 5:16
….and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.

Have a Blessed Week in Prayer!