Prevailing Prayer!

During the last month especially, the Lord has been teaching us here at EI a lot about persevering and prevailing prayer. One of our GC missionaries was arrested when entering a country with a suitcase of bibles. During this time we were alerted about the situation and began interceding for him around the clock. He was released a few days later unharmed and untouched miraculously! Praise be to God! Be assured that when we pray we never change the mind of God, for He knows our thoughts before we even think about them (Ps 139:2). The beautiful thing about prayer though is that by discerning the will of God and praying accordingly we are able to take part in God's glory and what He is doing around where we are and around the world. Through this answered prayer we boast in Christ and Christ alone. An aspect of God which the Lord has really been reaffirming in my life lately has been, Jesus Christ as our Great High Priest! He in continually interceding before the throne of heaven on the behalf of His children. As we are born of a sinful nature and will find ourselves in many difficult situations tempted and tested, for we are no match for the devil. Be assure that our Great High Priest desires the very best for us and is praying that our faith fail us not as He did with Peter (Luke 22:31-32). The man who was arrested came to visit us here at EI and shared with us his testimony and what the Lord did through the situation he found himself in. I was really encouraged and challenged in getting to know him and hearing about how the Lord met him and provided everything he needed to endure, even in a place where he thought he would not come out alive. The devil has been and is right now a defeated foe, so let us continue to share of the goodness of God, destroying the works of the enemy (Rev. 12:11). A quote that I have heard lately and thought that it was really good was "Let us be an Arminian on your feet and a Calvinist on your knees!" We need to continue to teach and preach the gospel every where we go even in the face of death as if it were up to man to save and yet we need to be on our knees pleading and interceding to God, knowing that there is nothing of our own self that will ever be able to save a single soul.


Another prayer request that i do want to make you aware of if you aren't already is for a young teacher here at EI. He is about 29 and just had his first little boy, he was very active in mountain climbing and even worked for search and rescue in CO. About three weeks ago he came down with a very dreadful yet mysterious decease called Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Basically what this does is it shuts down the entire nervous system. So for the last two weeks Michael has been completely paralyzed but able to still feel pain and itch. Right now he can only move his little pinky a little and his eye brows. This has been another real life situation that the Lord has been using to teach me about persevering and prevailing prayer. If you think about it please join in prayer for healing and that the Lord would be Glorified through this unsuspected circumstance. Also for grace and endurance for his wife as during this same time their little boy has been hospitalized as well. We are all praying and expecting great things, trusting that the Lord knows exactly what he is doing. A verse that I want to leave you with that the Lord encouraged me with is Rom 12;12 "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer". No matter what life brings our way, Praise be to God that we have hope to rejoice in our Lord Jesus Christ, that by being patient in tribulations the Lord is forming us more into the likeness of Himself which is the highest possible goal to seek after as Paul explains in Col. And through it all taking everything to God in prayer.