PRAISE HIM !

High up on the Wolds, we looked across the Ancholme Valley towards Winterton. It's usually a good view, but at 8 o'clock this morning the mist completely obscured our town. We prayed as we looked into the mist, knowing that the people we were praying for were right there, even though we could not see them, or their houses.

How important it is that we pray

EVEN WHEN WE CANNOT SEE.

The Psalmist prayed to God in HOPE and his prayer became a song of praise:

But I will hope continually, and will praise you yet more and more.
My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all day long, though their number is past my knowledge.
I will come praising the mighty deeds of the Lord God, I will praise your righteousness, yours alone.
O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
So even to old age and grey hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to all the generations to come.
Your power and your righteousness, O God, reach the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you? Psalm 71:14-19NRSV

Verse 18 in the AMPLIFIED Bible speaks to me !! (in more ways than one) …

Yes, even when I am old and grey-headed, O God, forsake me not, [but keep me alive] until I have declared Your mighty strength to [this] generation, and Your might and power to all that are to come.

PRAYER

I want to encourage you through these blogs to get serious about prayer (and fasting...it's Lent on Feb 6th !)

My experience of prayer is like that of Jacob (Genesis 32 v24-30), a varied mixture of struggle and blessing! Though long in the tooth as a believer, I still find it hard to tune-in to the 'still small voice', and really listen to God....

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'His Isles' was a national prayer conference held at Swanwick organised by the Prayer Association for the British Isles.

Here's a few of the highlights:

From Kenya came a word from the Lord that 2007 would be a year of preparation for the nation and that 2008 would be a year of harvest. But there are three things that God hates and that we need to urgently pray about as a nation - our deception, our bloody hands and our idolatry.

Later another prophecy came that God is putting in place a net across our nation but that at the moment the net isn’t strong enough to hold his power. What are we doing to build ‘networks’ with police, teachers, local authorities as well as other churches?

How many of us have ‘planted seeds’ into people’s lives which we are still waiting to see the fruit of? God says that the seed is still to come forth…keep praying!

In 1966 when the Evangelical Alliance acknowledged the Charismatic Movement, one prophecy given paralleled this to Jesus going into the wilderness for 40 days after receiving the Holy Spirit at his baptism. Jesus came out of the wilderness in the power of the Spirit. The Church is coming out of a 40 year wilderness in that same power. Keep praying!
with thanks to Lou Ashford (September 2007)

We MUST get serious about prayer NOW.
What better time to recover our prayer life than this Lent.

William Arthur, a leading Methodist of the 1850s argued that the primary need of the ministry is the power of the Holy Spirit; he believed that it’s absence is our corporate responsibility. 'Prayer is the condition of obtaining this power. Prayer, prayer, all prayer – mighty, importunate, repeated united prayer'. He goes on to insist that a Church’s members must be ‘mighty in prayer’.

So we need to pray, to cry out to God, to wrestle in prayer, to pray all night if necessary. To refuse to ‘let go’ until the blessing is ours.

What if, together, we say this through the 40 days of Lent:

Lord Jesus Christ,
driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit,
I come to you aware of my frailty
and reluctance to fight temptation.
Make me, by the same Spirit,
determined to discover you
in stillness and activity,
in order and chaos,
when alone and when in fellowship,
in weakness and in strength,
when uncertain and when certain,
when needing help and when giving it.
Wherever I am and whatever I am doing,
I pray that the Holy Spirit will help my unbelief,
and grow faith in me....
such faith as will release in me
prayer without ceasing. Amen