I recently shared this message with my prayer group ladies. Unlike a bible study group which I also lead and facilitate at my church, I find leading and facilitating prayer groups to be A LOT more challenging. I wrestled about the reasons why. I think Corrie ten Boom summarized it well from the devil’s perspective.
1. Hello ladies! Here is our next MIP prayer sheet for Wednesday, 11/16 at 1pm. Theme is “God is Mighty.” As I was typing this, I felt the Holy Spirit asking me “Do you believe this?” Being honest here, like the father who brought his son to Jesus’ disciples for healing and deliverance but they were not able to; I’d also say like this father to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief.” I give credit to the father that at least he knew who to bring his son to for healing and deliverance. When we pray to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, then I believe we are being like this wise dad. Here is their story: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+9%3A14-29&version=NKJV
We’ll pray on Wednesday and bring our children/peers, their schools and needs using this prayer theme – GOD IS MIGHTY:
2. Ever since I was commissioned by the Lord to establish a women’s prayer group in 2016, I had to learn and study the what’s, how’s, who’s of prayer. The prayer groups felt like I was running couple of local stores. Prayer ministry “store” is like a revolving door with customers coming and going. There are a few people who stayed and kept the store opened with me for a season or more. It’s has been a very interesting journey and I have learned so much about individual and corporate prayers through running this ministry “store”.
You would think that I would feel very confident about my knowledge of prayer. Nope not at all, I feel like I have only tapped into the surface of prayer. One thing I am confident is that God responds to our tear-filled prayers, especially for others. Here is a wonderful, true testimony of a mom’s prayers for her drug-addicted daughter being answered through her local MIP group. May it inspire us to persevere in prayer for our children/grandchildren and our friend’s children too. Many times our prayer meetings were mom’s-in-tears meetings. Why? Because we were so heartbroken about the situation of the youth in our country. These days I am sure even if you don’t have teenagers and young adults you are also being heartbroken about it too. Please pray and cry out to our God through our Lord Jesus Christ and ask for a revival in our land. This is our only hope.
By the way, as you pray for other people’s children and grandchildren then one day when your children and grandchildren need SOS help, then your children and family will be incredibly blessed because they will have many believers who will be interceding with you for their crisis. It is not IF the storm will come, but WHEN. Preparation is key to not being overcome by the storms of life.
If the Holy Spirit is leading you to open up a prayer “store” in your local area, please listen and obey. Then keep the prayer “store” open until the Holy Spirit releases you from your post or hands off the store key to another prayer person(s). Let there never be an interruption or void in prayer for our children and grandchildren, and their schools. Remember also that the store’s owner is God and we are his store managers and workers. As a customer, if you have a complaint about a manager or worker at your local prayer “store”, you can talk directly to the Owner about us too. 🙂 But please understand that it’s not easy to keep a store open for business. A good retail store should have fresh foods and supplies; be punctual, prepared and presentable. Sometimes life storms happen to us, and as store managers we are not always at our best.
Perfection is the enemy of progress. I have to let go of perfection while running the prayer stores and I am learning to be okay with making mistakes, forgiving and laughing at myself too. Please extend the same grace and kindness to your local pastors and church leaders. They are keeping their “store” open for business as best as possible. Please pray for them and encourage them whenever you can.
Prayer Update: My nephew Brandon is doing very well. It was only six weeks ago when he got into a horrible car accident on the highway and had to be airlifted to a hospital. No broken bones or brain injury. It is truly amazing. His only surgery was in his intestinal area due to seatbelt trauma. Surgeon cleared him last week to drive and go back to work again. Thank you so much for praying for Brandon. God has spared his life and our family from much grief and suffering.
That’s it for today. Take care and God bless you abundantly! With love and prayers from your librarian.
If you have been blessed by my blogging, please share with others. I think it’s my first time asking you to share. Maybe somebody that you know would benefit from my sharing. Please pray for me too. I feel like I need to share more details of my experiences and testimonies of running the prayer stores. There were so many attacks and also many victories. I have grown up a lot from running these stores. Pray that I will know how to share my stories with tact and sensitivity. I have many former and still faithful Catholics in our prayer group. Thank you for your prayers for me.
Journal of Faith 