He prayed a crazy prayer. God answered.

God moves mountains and U.S. Navy ships, just ask Rocky Colona.

Growing up in St. Louis under remarried parents, Rocky, half Sicilian, had one half-brother and three half-sisters. Because his dad was excommunicated from the Catholic church for his divorce, Rocky attended church sporadically.

He was a straight-A student who got into a lot of trouble in the public school (he started drinking at 13), so his parents moved him to an expensive private Catholic school, a strategy that didn’t help much. He graduated early because of some shameful things he told a teacher with cancer.

“They passed me a year early because I was so bad,” Rocky says on the Virginia Beach Potter’s House podcast. “I said some things to her that I was just in a bad state in life.”

At the University of Missouri-St Louis, he drank his way to failing grades and decided to drop out and join the Navy, at the urging of a fellow sporty friend, with the aim of becoming a SEAL.

He never became a SEAL because he fell in love and married a woman named Ingrid in the Presidential Honor Guard. He viewed the Honor Guard as a stepping stone to his goal. Ultimately, he abandoned the SEAL dream at the warning of his friend.

“All these (SEALs) guys are divorced,” Joe told him. “I don’t know if this is going to be good for you.”

As a secondary plan, Rocky wanted to work his way into the CIA, FBI, or Secret Service. At the top of his class in A school, he got his pick of ships and opted for the Kearsarge, which wasn’t to deploy for 1 ½ years — after he planned to leave the Navy.

But when he reported for duty Jan. 6, 2002, he was hit with shocking news. They would leave on an unscheduled deployment in three days. At the time, President Bush was accusing Iraq of secretly building weapons of mass destruction, and the Navy was getting into position for possible action. His wife was stationed on the USS Eisenhower, so they were apart.

“We literally didn’t see land for the entire 6 ½ months except for two days,” Rocky remembers. “I got really depressed. Eating habits went away. I stopped working out.”

So, he did something he never had done. He prayed a non-ritualistic prayer, a sincere heartfelt plea: “God, if you can get me home for the 4th of July, I’ll quit drinking, I’ll quit smoking, I’ll live like a priest,” he implored. “That’s what I thought God wanted.”

The next day, the amphibious assault ship’s chief petty officer announced over the public address system: “Somebody else took our spot, and we’re going to head home. We’re going to be home on the 3rd of July.”

Rocky went up to the deck, threw his cigarettes and chewing tobacco overboard and marveled how God had moved an entire ship due to his tiny prayer. He didn’t know the scripture about the mustard seed of faith yet.

He promised to nix his vices, a pledge he wasn’t able to keep.

He was ecstatic to see his wife.

“We were happy to be back together. It was like… Read the rest: Moving mountains and Navy ships through prayer.

Brain tumor dissolved through prayer, hole left behind

Stan Lander stared blankly at his wife when she asked a question. It was the second time some sort of brain fog prevented him from articulating, even thinking.

The doctor’s scan revealed an inoperable, probably cancerous mass in the middle of his brain.

“It was a death sentence, the Edmonds, Washington, man remembered on a CBN video.

The second scan only confirmed their worst fears.

“Is this my life?” Stan asked in disbelief.

But Stan and Aleta were Christian believers. So, in time of trial, they gathered their courage and prayed. Their church joined them in prayer.

The doctor’s prognosis was grim: the rare CNS Lymphoma spelled three to six months to live.

“Even in the midst of that dire prognosis, we knew that God was still for us and had a plan for our life,” Stan says.

Their neurosurgeon, Dr. Lau, told them, “I say from a neurosurgical point of view, we cannot do anything much.”

An MRI was scheduled.

Meanwhile, Stan and Aleta were watching the 700 Club one week before the second MRI and the woman praying, Terry Meeuwsen, made a startling statement:

“You’ve been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and there is no question whether you have it or not, it’s there and you question whether God can heal such a thing,” Meeuwsen said. “Today God is setting you free, he’s totally healing that tumor; it’ll just disappear.”

Stan and his wife were startled. It seemed the woman on TV was describing him.

“That’s for me!” Stan exclaimed.

When Dr. Lau saw the MRI results, he was taken aback. Where there had been a white image of the tumor, now there was only black, indicating there was a hole.

“There’s a hole in the brain!” he shouted. “There’s a hole in the brain!”

A miracle had occurred, and the Landers were overcome with astonishment and joy.

“When you see the picture, your jaw drops,” Dr. Lau says. “You saw the white stuff… Read the rest: Cure for a brain tumor.

Coco Gauff prays for her opponents

Steam-roll, blast, defeat, thrash, shellac, rout, conquer, trounce, humble, squash, dominate, or dismantle – just a few of the ways sports competitors wish to deal with their opponents.

Coco Gauff prays for her opponents.

“Before every match since I was eight, my dad and I say a prayer together,” Coco told Christian Headlines. “We don’t really pray about victory, just that me and my opponent stay safe.”

Cori “Coco” Gauff has a notable sports pedigree. Her parents were NCAA Division 1 athletes who supported her journey to professional tennis, sacrificing careers and comfort (Mom left a good job and house in Atlanta to move in with grandparents and homeschool in Florida for better training opportunities).

The move paid off.

In the 2019 French Open, Coco entered as a virtual unknown, receiving a wildcard invitation. Coco kept beating highly ranked girls. Then she faced the legendary Venus Williams, ranked 40th in the world at that time.Read the rest: Coco Gauff Christian.

Asperger’s son went prodigal

When Graham Cottone was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s at age 10, it was a tremendous relief. Before that, his parents didn’t know what was wrong and they blamed themselves. He was constantly punished, made fun of, and friendless.

“He was hard. He was very, very hard to love,” Lore Cotton, his mother, says on a 700 Club Interactive video. “You love your children. They’re your children. We disciplined out of anger on several occasions. It was scary to think, ‘What are we doing? We’re spanking all the time.”

Graham’s behavior worsened beginning at age 12.

“It just was so overwhelming. I remember just going in my bedroom and being so exasperated,” Lore says. “I just fell down on my bed and just began sobbing.”

Out of her prayer that day, God impressed on her heart: Graham is going to get it.

Despite what Lore felt God impart, she didn’t see any encouraging signs. To the contrary, Graham went downhill fast.

At 13, he began using marijuana. He began cutting himself to relieve anxiety. He started fires in the house. He got into a physical fight with his dad, Lore recounts.

“He ran out and got a rock and he threw it and he hit me in the head,” says Michael Cottone, the father. They called 911, and the police intervened. Graham was arrested and jailed and placed under a restraining order to stay away from home.

“We know you’re going to let him come back,” the cops told the parents at the time. “But we’re not.”

Not long after, Graham experienced some sort of emotional breakdown and broken into a house in Texas.

He grew up in jail and mental hospitals.

“I wanted Graham to have peace and have joy,” Lore says.

Graham moved to Colorado, then hitchhiked to Oregon.

“We were actually on a vacation in Mexico,” Lore says. “Graham called us just half crazed, he was crying and screaming and mad because he had run out of all of his medications and he was at a hospital and they wouldn’t give him any more medications.”

Lore offered to wire him some money but said she couldn’t do much else.

“He got upset. He hung up on me,” Lore remembers. “Right before he hung up on me, he said, ‘I’m, going to hurt somebody.’”

Graham wouldn’t answer his phone and soon lost his phone. There was no way to get ahold of him.

“It felt really bad. It felt like the end,” she says. “All we could do was pray. I just told God, ‘He is yours. He’s always been yours. I want so badly to go rescue him, but I know you brought me here. You took me out of the way. I need to trust and let You do your thing.’”

After the vacation, Lore got a call from her son in Sacramento, California. He had hopped a freight train down from Portland with a group of vagabonds.

“I lost everything,” he said. “I knew I didn’t know anybody for thousands of miles, but I need God.”

“I had this vision of Hell,” Graham says. “It wasn’t a place where people were eternally tortured. It was this place where people just chose to do things their own way.” Read the rest: Asperger’s son went prodigal

Muslim YouTuber validates killing ‘apostates’

A popular UK Muslim apologist has validated and justified the execution of apostates — people who abandon Islam — in a YouTube video from August.

Ali Dawah, who purports to make Islam palatable to his 516K subscribers, did nothing to play down Islam’s call to execute “unbelievers.” To the contrary, he voiced full support in addressing an ex-Muslim who reached out to Muslim YouTubers..

“There’s a reason why there’s a capital punishment because people like you, little weaklings, who leave their religion and cause corruption in the land by spreading it, the capital punishment will be applied to you,” he says.

“We have no doubt, and we’re proud of that.”

At least Dawah discourages free-lance murderers, lone wolf Islamists who single-handedly carry out the wrath of Allah by themselves. Killing apostates of Islam should and must only be done in an orderly and properly organized way, beneath an Islamic state constituted under a proper Emir.

“Not individuals going and doing it themselves, like idiots,” he clarifies in the Aug. 14, 2020 video. “Not under an emir. It is done, yes. And we, you know what? we’ll be watching. We’ll be watching because if you’re going to cause corruption in the land that’s going to cause more damage to the society as a whole, because the sharia didn’t come to protect an individual’s right.

“No, Islam says the right of the community is greater than you individual. Wanting your right to freedom, which is bs, absolutely bs, yeah don’t get me started.”

Dawah is something of Islam’s Ray Comfort in the United Kingdom. His justifying of the ways of Allah via YouTube is an attempt to make converts and shore up the faith of Muslims. Dawah also goes into the streets and films his debates with random people.

Apologetics is the study of presenting a religion to non-believers in such a way as to win new followers. In Christianity, Josh McDowell did a great service compiling the proof of Christianity’s God in “Evidence that Demands a Verdict.” More recently, atheist-turned-believer Lee Strobel wrote “The Case of Christ.”

In most cases, apologists try to smooth over the rough edges of the Bible. Raymond Abraham says the violence of the Old Testament is “descriptive, not prescriptive,” meaning it was a historic fact of all migrating hordes of people, not an order from God in any circumstance.

What Dawah does then is extremely unusual because he highlights a fact that might turn many off from Islam.

True Christianity has never killed unbelievers. It was born in persecution. It makes no sense that it would then become the source of pain it suffered from the start. (To be sure, the Puritans allowed excesses, as is documented — and perhaps exaggerated in The Scarlet Letter by Nathanael Hawthorne.)

What Muslims do in their Islamic states, and what the secular media turns a blind eye to, would shock Westerners. So why does Dawah, in effect, expose the truth? Read the rest: Muslim YouTuber validates killing apostates.

Through 71 days hospitalized, praise sustained him as he fought Covid

James Story wrote a song for his sister after her death. How could he possibly have known that the same song would save his life?

James contracted Covid-19 in March, in the early stages of the outbreak in America when doctors still did not know much about the pandemic. He very nearly died.

“I had become septic. I started dialysis because the kidneys were failing,” James recounts on a CBN video. “From there it was pretty much downhill.”

James felt chills and fever in March of this year, when Covid first broke out in the U.S. He went to the ER, but doctors, not diagnosing Covid, sent him home. Over the weekend, he grew worse and had to be taken to the hospital.

For several weeks, he went in and out of consciousness and remained on a ventilator for 15 days. His vitals got progressively worse. His kidneys were breaking down, so he required hemodialysis. Among the many afflicted by Covid, his was one of the most severe.

Meanwhile, his friends from church set up a prayer page on Facebook, and the Gallatin, Tennessee Methodist church entreated God on behalf of the retired college music professor.

As he lingered near death, James didn’t just waste his downtime in the hospital. “I took advantage of the time that I had away to meditate and read scriptures and become closer to God,” he says.

That’s when he got a vision.

“I felt like I was in a grave, and I was trying to pull myself up (out of the grave) to the sunlight,” he remembers. “I felt as though I saw the face of God and He was reaching out his hand to me. All I could do was bow down and worship.”

Meanwhile, doctors were concerned the damage would be permanent, which required the installation of a tracheostomy feeding tube.

Nurse practitioner Laura Youngman attests to the miracle.

In all, James spent 71 days in the hospital.

Eventually, doctors wanted to get him off the ventilator. But James was attached to the easy breathing like a security blanket. He became agitated over the potential loss of the ventilator. Read the rest: James Story’s recovery from Covid was helped by prayer and praise.

Wannabe terrorist turned to Jesus

The reason why so many Saudis fill the ranks and leadership of terrorist organizations today is because teachers and preachers in Saudi Arabia praised the “holy war” of Muslims against non-Muslims in Afghanistan in the 1980s, says a convert to Christianity.

“A whole generation was brought up this way and taught to think this way,” says Nasser al’Qahtan. “Sadly the world is reaping the fruit for what we were taught when we were young.”

Nasser, who was born and raised on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, longed to die for Allah by waging jihad, and thus improving his chances of making it into Paradise. But along the way he converted to Christ and now exposes the diabolical beginnings of today’s world upheaval.

Nasser’s parents were opposed to the idea of their 12-year-old going to Pakistan for training and being smuggled into Afghanistan to fight the Russians, but many of his older friends did join jihad.

“God had other plans for me,” he says on a Your Living Manna video.

In the summer of 1990, Nasser plotted to run away and join jihad, but Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. At the time, he was actually in the United States with his mother visiting relatives and the ensuing world chaos prevented him from leaving “this evil nation” of America.

Nasser hunkered down for the long haul, playing the role of the religious police with his younger siblings to make sure they still prayed and read the Koran. He didn’t want them to come under Satanic influences in America. Eventually, he worried about himself and eyed with suspicion the Americans around him.

“What was I going to do? I was surrounded by infidels. You either make a war against them or you try to bring them into Islam another way,” he says. “I thought Allah brought me here to evangelize them.”

Nasser’s English was very good and he thought his Islamic apologetics weren’t bad either.

“I began to tell everybody about Islam, my fellow students, my teachers, my neighbors, everybody I came into contact with,” he says. “I started to see some fruit. I started to see regular American people abandoning their prior beliefs and becoming Muslims. Some of them grew up in the church and they renounced Jesus. I thought I was fantastic.”

As he learned about American culture, he eventually perceived that born-again Christians were different than the rest of Americans (who he wrongly assumed to all be Christians), and he began to target them because he figured it would be easy for them to switch since they already lived clean lives.

One of those loving and clean-living Christians was a woman with whom Nasser fell in love.

“That was my undoing,” he admits.

Only after marrying Daisy did he begin to correct her beliefs about Jesus. She should no longer idolize Jesus, who was nothing more than just another of Allah’s prophets, he said. Mohammad was the main guy.

The pressure he put on her grew in time and caused great strain on their marriage, and even some Christian friends counseled her to divorce for being “unequally yoked,” a mistake she had made while being a nominal Christian.

But Daisy, pressured to evaluate her childhood faith, wound up affirming her relationship with Christ. Encouraged by an aunt who had been a missionary for decades in Brazil, she not only prayed for her husband but mobilized thousands of Christians in mega churches in North Texas to pray.

Those prayers began to take effect. Outwardly, her husband appeared secure in his beliefs, but inwardly he was struggling. He knew his sins were too great and the mountain of good works and prayers needed to offset them too much. He began to ponder again the easiest and most and most assured path to Paradise — jihad.

Finally, his wife ventured to invite him to church, which, out of curiosity, he accepted. His consciousness of his sin was so great that he concluded, “If I’m going to go to Hell, I might as well find out what they do in church.”

“I thought it was the most Satanic thing I had ever seen,” he says. “But I was so drawn to keep coming back by the love I felt there. Eventually he broke down and asked God for the truth.

“Immediately I had a vision. Everything before me was wiped away and I was transported to this rocky hill, looking down at this man who was so brutally beaten to the point of being unrecognizable,” he says. “He was being nailed to a cross. I knew this was Jesus.

“I watched as the cross was lifted up and He’s hanging there bleeding and struggling for breath. I’m looking Him in the eyes. He’s looking at me and through me. He sees all of my junk, the hidden things in my life. I feel this wave of shame.

“But he’s not looking at me with disgust, which is what I expected. He’s looking at me with this fierce love. As He’s fighting for every breath on the cross, He’s fighting with every breath for me.”

The darkness from all humanity was put on Him on the cross.

“The darkness wasn’t overcoming Him. He was overcoming it.”

Then Jesus said, “It is finished.”

“The reason I did this is that you and all the people that were meant to be my children were snatched away from Me, and you sold yourselves to other powers. To buy you back, this was the cost. This was the price that I paid for you Nasser.”

The vision disappeared. Nasser hadn’t heard the sermon. Read the rest: Saudi terrorist turned to Jesus.

He didn’t believe prayer. When they brought Mazola oil to anoint him, he scoffed

Because he didn’t much believe in prayer, Roy Davidson declined when some men on a missions trip offered to pray for his sharp ulcer pain.

“Well, gosh, these are just common guys,” he thought to himself, as narrated in a CBN video. “How could they heal anybody?”

Pain was his constant companion since age 31 when he was diagnosed with inoperable stomach ulcers that, if not controlled, could be fatal.

“I just worked with pain. I lived with pain. I slept with pain. I ate with pain. I partied with pain,” Roy says. “Wherever we went, I just lived with pain.”

Additionally, his stomach was lined with scar tissue.

Roy quit his stressful corporate job.

During his quest for a peaceful life, he went on a mission trip to Haiti. That’s when the ulcers flared up worse than ever before.

“I couldn’t go to work. I couldn’t walk. This was like a knife stabbing pain. It was an aggravating pain, a gnawing pain,” he recalls. “The doctors told me that if they couldn’t control the bleeding, if they couldn’t get the ulcers under control, that a condition like that could be fatal. It could kill you.”

That’s when the other men on the trip and the local pastors stepped forward to compassionately offer prayer.

Roy believed in God. He was skeptical about God’s direct and personal intervention through prayer however.

“To be honest,” Roy admits, “I didn’t give them enough credit.”

He decided to tough it out.

But after two day of worsening symptoms, the men came again to pray.

One Haitian pastor pulled out some cooking oil to anoint him — a move Roy associated with superstition.

“Oh, good grief! This is the crowning insult,” he scoffed. “They’re going to anoint me with cooking oil!”

But after he was dabbed on the forehead with Mazola, something happened.

“The whole room started spinning,” he remembers. Read the rest: He didn’t believe in prayer until God healed him of untreatable ulcers.

Hordes of prayer warriors unseen behind Trump

There’s an army of unseen, anonymous prayer warriors backing up President Trump during the COVID crisis, which possibly accounts for his popularity and success in spite of the apparent hostile mass media and entrenched intelligentsia.

“Dear Lord please heal our nation and protect our President so that he can serve a second term and lead our land,” Grandma CJ wrote on President Trump’s Facebook Prayer Team page.

CJ joined a hailstorm of enthusiastic comments in response to photos showing pastors praying for Trump. The post read simply, “I’m praying for my president. You too?”

After 13 hours, the Facebook post had gathered 1,200 thumbs-up or hearts, 203 shares and 294 comments. It wasn’t viral, but it was a strong signal of support.

The interaction suggests hordes of praying people undergirding President Trump with much more than just their votes. They’re standing up for Christian pro-life values and bending their knees in repentance, asking the Father to bring healing to a hurting nation and world.

It is hard to estimate how many people across America are actively and earnestly praying for the president – especially during the current crisis.

One survey indicates that posts often get four times the exposure you may think. In other words, Facebook users who thought a post was seen by 20 friends was actually seen by 80. If this rule applies, this innocuous call for prayer for the president may have reverberated through tens of thousands.

Another important metric is the criticism leveled by anti-Trumpers who allege Facebook “threw” the election to Trump, blaming nefarious Russian bot plots.

But the fact of the matter is that while poll after poll predicted a certain Clinton win, posts on Facebook were frequently in favor of Trump. It seemed that Christians, who are ignored by traditional media, were resorting to social media to voice their frustrations.

Buy Trump Cup on Amazon.

The upshot? What gets posted on Facebook reveals a behemoth. So it’s not far-fetched to conjecture that there are literally millions of American Christians praying for the president.

It’s no secret that the traditional media outlets hate Trump. Some outright vilify him daily, filling news columns with controversies, even to the point of making them up. Early in his presidency, it was claimed First Lady Melania didn’t want to hold his hand after a camera recorded her rebuffing his gesture of affection. Whole articles were confabulated speculating that their marriage was on the rocks. Four years later, Melania is still by his side. Read the rest: Pray for Trump.

Joey Vantes, suicide rapper

“Sending love and prayers for all those facing loss, depression, or heartache this season. DM me if you need someone to talk to and to pray with you.”

That’s what Christian Hip Hop sensation Joey Vantes wrote on Facebook Dec. 14th. He knows that Christmas, for many, heightens their isolation, depression and thoughts of suicide. He has a heart for more than just music or stardom. He has a heart for the hurting.

That’s because Joey Vantes (formerly Joey Jewish) tried to commit suicide himself. He was trying to quit the partying and drugs from his days at the University of Arizona. But he kept lapsing back into drinking, and the cycle of failure detonated depression.

“It was just a mess. I couldn’t break free,” Joey told Rapzilla. “I was so depressed. I was so bound to this thing that I just wanted to die to escape what I was feeling on a daily basis.”

One day when his wife sent him for groceries, he decided to end his life. He would drive off the road down a steep embankment.

“I jerked my wheel to the left to pull off at this ramp and right when I [did] it, my wheel locks, my car shuts off and I slowly just kind of fade over to the left side of the road,” Joey said. “Immediately, the Spirit of God just hits me right where I am in my car.I feel this intense love come over me and say, ‘I love you and I forgive you. Just call out to me.’” Read the rest: Suicide rapper Joey Vantes

Triad gang member scraped with death before finding Jesus

As multiracial dyslexic at 11 years old, Choby Siau was an easy target for bullying at his new school in New Zealand.

“Because of that, I started to fight. I started to fight to defend” my brother and me, Choby narrates in the video he made documenting his salvation.

Choby grew up in a church, but he never had a personal relationship with God. He felt hurt by the church.

“I knew He was real, but I just really thought, ‘How can God let abuse happen to me and my brother?’ I had a distrust of God, and I blamed God for what I went through,” Choby continues.

At 13 years old, Choby and his family left to Penang, Malaysia, where he joined a local Triad, a Chinese mafia.

Choby in his gang

“My goal was to raise in the ranks,” Choby says. “I wanted to become a boss in the Triad.”

Choby got kicked out of school in the 8th grade.

“Choby, because you’re out (of school), I’m going to teach you about the ways of the Chinese Triad,’” Choby’s boss told him.

Choby was hooked for life.

Choby started as a fighter. Anytime there was a problem for the Triad in Penang, he was called upon to settle scores.

At 17, he and his family moved to America, far away from his girlfriend. Through his connections in the Triad, he learned she was cheating on him.

“Listen,” he threatened his girlfriend over the phone, “I want you to tell that guy that I have a present coming for him.”

But before he could board the plane, his mom had a very serious talk with him.

“Son, I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again,” she told him ominously.

“God spoke to her that I was gonna die in Malaysia,” Choby explains. Read the rest of Triad gang member comes to salvation

A spider saved a Marine in WW2

After intense fighting against the Japanese on Okinawa during World War II, a Marine got separated from his unit amid the explosions, smoke, and chaos of battle.

He was alone in the hills in dangerous enemy territory. The sun was setting, and the stranded Marine heard the approach of Japanese soldiers so he took refuge in one of the many caves on the ridge.

It was no use. As the minutes passed, he realized the Japanese were searching methodically cave by cave for any American soldiers. With grim resignation, he realized his own death was imminent and inevitable. It was only a matter of time before the enemy would approach his cave and find him in the recesses.

But the Marine was a Christian, so he prayed to God.

“Lord, if it be your will, please protect me,” he prayed, as narrated on a website by Father Hugh Duffy. “Whatever your will though, I love you and trust you. Amen.”

As he prayed, he observed a spider building a web over the crawl space of an entrance to the cave. He scoffed on the inside.

“Ha! What I need is a brick wall and what the Lord has sent me is a spider web,” the anonymous Marine thought. “Well, I guess the Lord isn’t going to help me out of this one.”

He remained extremely still and quiet as he listened. The enemy was getting closer. He readied himself to make a last stand.

But to his surprise, the Japanese soldiers passed by his cave and didn’t search its interior. Read the rest: prayer saved a Marine by way of a spider’s web.

Healed of inoperable tumor

Over her whole adult life, Evelyn Cartwright suffered unbearable headaches that she thought were due to high blood pressure.

In 2014, she experienced a headache like no other.

“Kind of like a heartbeat just thumping on the top of my head,” she told the 700 Club. “And the pain was worse than anything I had ever felt in my life before.”

Evelyn went to the emergency room and after having an MRI, she received the news that she had a inoperable, benign tumor on her brain.

Over three months, Evelyn went through five rounds of radiation.

While she went through the treatment, Evelyn’s husband was dying and she needed to take care of him.

“God, where are You through all of this?” she cried. “What’s really going on here?’”

She recruited a prayer group to support her.

Read the rest healed of inoperable tumor.

El Chapo’s mom is a Christian who prays for her son to repent

While drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman sits in a New York jail waiting a likely life sentence, his mother in Sinaloa lives modestly, attends church and prays for him to “turn himself over to the Lord to serve Him before it’s too late.”

“He’s already experienced what there is in the world and knows what it has,” María Consuelo Loera Pérez told Univision in 2014. “Now he should seek God so that he knows that only God can sort out his problems.”

Her simple house doesn’t look like a mega drug trafficker furnished it. It can only be reached using rugged dirt roads that wind into the mountains.

For the last 36 years, Consuelo has faithfully attended the Apostolic Church of the Faith in Jesus Christ.

While El Chapo’s son flaunted his wealth, Consuelo conspicuously lacks such luxuries.

Her humble lifestyle consisting of sewing, reading her Bible and attending church is a stark contrast to the lavish lifestyle her son once lived. El Chapo, 61, rose to prominence in the Sinaloa Drug Cartel by pioneering drug trafficking pathways into the U.S. through long tunnels, CNN reported.

Once the drugs were inside America, it was distributed by cells in Arizona, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York overseen by El Chapo.

By murdering rivals, El Chapo amassed an estimated fortune of $14 billion and lived in resort-like mansions with gold-plated AK-47s and diamond-encrusted pistols. He reportedly bragged to have killed up to 3,000 people to stay at the top of the world’s largest drug cartel.

Twice El Chapo was arrested by Mexican authorities and twice he escaped prison, in 2001 and again in 2015. He was recaptured in 2016 and extradited to the United States. He was found guilty on Feb. 12 of all 10 federal charges for trafficking, money laundering and illegal possession and use of firearms. He will be sentenced in June and is expected to be condemned to life in prison without parole.

Chapo’s third wife.

“God is strengthening me. I know He is with me and with my children,” says Consuelo. “As his mother, I’m always asking God for his well being. As a mother, I’m feeling bad for what he’s going through. As a mother, one does her best to raise her children, and then when they’re grown, they go and do whatever they want. Whether they do good or bad, one still is mother.” Read the rest: El Chapo’s mom is Christian and praying for her son.

Half way around the world, her prayers brought him to the Lord

At exactly the moment David Fish was passing through a spiritual crisis in the Air Force in England, his neighbor’s mother — the Christian lady he looked up to — passed by his house walking the dog and remembered to pray for him.

As result, halfway around the world Jesus showed up and reassured David he could be forgiven of sin.

Never brush off the sudden urge to pray.

The incident was one of three supernatural apparitions that came to David, helping to deliver him from alcohol and the kingdom of darkness, moving him into the light of Jesus.

As a 15-year-old, David started drinking and driving the tractor on his farm in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His father was an abusive alcoholic and wound up divorced, which left David reeling.

“I wondered if this was what life was all about,” he says.

David wanted to be like dad but hay fever kept him from farm work such as baling hay, so he decided he would prove his manhood by joining the Air Force, just like dad.

“I wanted to show that I could do what he could do,” David says. “I always wanted to prove to him that I could do a lot of things. I guess a lot of kids want to show their parents they can stand on their own two feet.”

In the Air Force, he did well training as a mechanic for the tank-toting C-130 Hercules aircraft. But because of a mounting problem with alcohol, he was “causing myself my own troubles,” he says.

One day, he got drunk before his shift and was faced with the quandary of missing it (going AWOL) or showing up inebriated. He risked going to the job and his superiors confronted him.

“That was the day from hell,” David says. “You’re head is pounding. You’re in trouble. They know it. You know it. Everybody else knows it. All the people milling around the office all know that you royally screwed up. You’re just sitting there out in the open. Life was not good that day.”

Instead of a court-martial, the Air Force sent David to rehab in Riverside, California, to salvage his life and career. He thought if he behaved himself and went through the program, maybe they’d give him another chance.

The program was Alcoholics Anonymous. “That was supposed to be the way to keep dry and sane and all that other stuff,” he says.

The program taught that chemical dependency disappeared at six weeks. But “that’s baloney,” he says. “The spiritual dependency does not stop at six weeks.”

He fell back into beer after three months, though he tried to maintain better control and drink less.

“It was through the Riverside program that I realized how messed up my life was because when I began to discuss things about family, I left my sister out,” he says. “I hated my sister for the things that she did and the things that we did growing up — the different fights we had.”

That’s when a fellow airman started witnessing to him.

“It was the most fascinating thing I ever heard,” he remembers. “I was glued to listening to what he had to say. A few days later, I was still thinking about the impact that he made.”

David didn’t accept Jesus that day.

He was then stationed in England in preparation for the bombing of Muammar Gaddafi in 1986. He kept drinking the “thick rich frothy beer there. I was getting wasted all the time, and drinking was picking up speed,” he says.

After binging for three weeks, David surmised his grim predicament: “My life is worth nothing. My parents got this divorce. No one loves me; no one cares. So why should I? In that moment, I felt like I put my life on the auction block. I didn’t care if God had me or if the devil had me. I was willing to give myself over to whoever would have me.”

David began asking questions of a Christian fellow airman, who handed over a book, “The Scientific Approach to Christianity,” about an unbeliever healed of terminal cancer when his believing wife prayed for him. Read the rest of power of prayer.

Prayer works

This is my list of people to pray to return to Jesus.Obviously,  I blurred it. But you can see that names crossed out. Those are the ones who have come back to Christ already. Those are answered prayers.

I encourage you to use lists in prayer so that you can see progress. You can see its effectiveness. This will encouraged you to keep praying and to pray more.

Planning and praying

Carlos se quejó de que había un pelo en su pan. Yo le dije que diera gracias a Dios que no hubiera un pedo un su pan.

I jumped at the chance to get my study group to help my church form a business plan. We worked hours analyzing strengths and weaknesses, projections and budgets, vision and philosophy. The resulting 20-page report had us planting a new church every two years. It was a glowing success and got us an A at the Central American Theological Seminary in Guatemala. Our plans were splendidly conceived and brilliantly explained.There was only one problem.

You can’t plan revival because revival comes from God.

Prayer works better than planning.

Don’t get me wrong. I fully believe in planning. I agree with the adage: he who fails to plan, plans to fail. BUT, the church is God’s. We can only submit to His will. We cannot force Him to bless our plans.

There is no way I could have planned this guy’s salvation (pictured). It comes as a confirmation of the strategies God has given us in Guatemala: the school and outreach. I can only praise Him for His work — and welcome Carlos heartily to salvation.

Fast your past

Fasting is to go without food — usually — for a prolonged period of time. It’s a way to devote yourself to God for a time of prayer. There may be an intensifying of prayer.

Maybe it would be good to fast your past. Let go of the failures and don’t believe you have to continue in them. Fast your successes; don’t rest on your laurels. Don’t hang on to your hurts. Let it go.

God is definitely about moving forward. Many people are crippled by the past. They’ve lost their vibrancy, their joy, their zest for life. Don’t be one of them.

Gummy bears work as rocket fuel. What does that mean to your belly?

Eventually the myth busters got it right. They had to devise a conical nozzle, and they had to grind the gummy bears into fine powder. But the caloric quantity represented enough stored energy to lift the rocket off its pad and launch it into the air. That’s a lot of stored energy.

Gummy bears are not a healthy snack. They are a quick trip to chubby. And they look so cute and harmless.

If you only knew the stored energy in one of those cute little prayers. Prayer packs a wallop. Just because you don’t see (immediately) the answer from God doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Slowly, surely, you’re building something for God’s kingdom.

Imperfect prayers. Perfect hearts.

We probably shouldn’t use prayer manuals with pre-written jargon that we can mindlessly recite. Not even the Lord’s prayer should be considered a magical formula that works even though we pronounce it while the mind wanders elsewhere.

If anything, the Lord’s prayer — or other prayers that we may admire for their theology, their poetry and their balance — should be an inspiration or a teaching. It should not be considered a mathematical formula that if re-employed with exactitude will wrest from Heaven miracles. What matters is your sincerity. And maybe focus.

I don’t think I’ve ever prayed a “perfect” prayer. And I have prayed many prayers. My ever-tenacious sin always bleeds in.

God is merciful. He has answered more prayers than I deserve. He has seen through my vile carnality to some glimmer of anguish, some desperate plea for Him to do what I cannot do, and He has responded.

Don’t look for perfect prayers. Try to have a perfect heart.

Meet Camila, born to parents who couldn’t have kids

Prayer brought her into the world, and from the looks of it she is now learning how to pray.

Her parents, Gunter and Yara, were among the best disciples in the church. Medically speaking, they couldn’t have kids. Evangelist after evangelist prayed for them. Then my friend, Isaias Campos, came to preach for me. Ironically, he himself couldn’t have natural children. But God told him he would pray for somebody to have kids. That did the trick.

My son, Hosea, among the kids of the Door Christian Church in Guatemala City.

I left Guatemala six years ago under duress. I am currently visiting, and I’m blown away by the revival I’m seeing. It’s been packed, and people are hungry for God.

Sometimes I wanna explode

at the outrageous unfairness.

Then God leads me to Isaiah 30:15: In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.

He calls me to exude peace, to trust and be unperturbed. The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. — James 1:20.

Don’t panic or rant. God will have His way. Stay and pray.

The wilderness shall become like Eden

I give waters in the wilderness. — Isaiah 43:20

He will comfort all her waste places, and He will make her wilderness like Eden. — Isaiah 51:3

The hard ground, the drought, the chronic problem — God will change it all. Where there is no hope, He will miraculously bring revival and blessing.

Death Valley is not miss-named. But unusually large amounts of rain this year have produced a “Super Bloom.” It seems to be the kind of thing God does in  a spiritually way. It opens your eyes to what God can do: the impossible turnaround.

Keep praying

It’s been more than a decade that Eddy visited us in Guatemala. Since then, my wife, kids and I were forced to return to the States and have been serving in the local church. His sister and mom remained faithful; Eddy was off doing something else.

Who popped up recently?

Yeah, it’s another motivation to keep praying for those people even when years are grinding on, even when you don’t see any tangible hope. The Spirit moves in invisible realms.

The power of a whistle

We won because I had the whistle. Coach Mefford and I split reffing duties while playing, but he doesn’t like to carry a whistle. We were winning 5-4, and the other team kept pressing for the equalizer. I was really tired at central defender. It was 12:15, and I had told parents we would be done a noon. Some parents were craning their necks at us as if to say, When are you guys going to be done?

But mostly I wanted to win. So I tweeted the long, plaintive toot that marks the end of the game. That’s how I made sure when we won.

That was the day I learned the power of the whistle. It is authority. It is a way to guarantee your calls are obeyed. Nobody can argue against a whistle.

Such a small thing, but 21 players obeyed and walked to the parking lot to clap out mud from their cleats.

Do you realize the authority you have as a Christian? Humanity lost authority in the Garden of Eden. Then Jesus came to get it back. Incredibly, He gave it back to us. But many Christians don’t use prayer or faith. They let the devil bully them around. There is the whistle, promises in the Bible, hanging around their necks. All you need to do is pinch it, pucker and puff.

Hey, to pray, you don’t have to bow head or knee. You don’t have to fold your hands. You don’t have to shout or break a sweat. You can pray in your head. And God will respond — always. Maybe He doesn’t act WHEN or HOW we want, but He responds in our benefit — invariably.

I always keep a whistle and a prayer handy.

How do I pray? Just do it.

Prayer is a journey from pain

If we didn’t feel pain, I don’t suppose we would pray. Not until we hit anguish do we remember our limitations and God’s limitlessness. So prayer, then, is a journey from pain to pleasure, from bruises to blessings, from hits to happiness.

If pain is the starting point, however, the journey doesn’t have to be painful. After all, we leave pain behind.

We need to see prayer less like instant answers and more of a pathway. Some hikes are short and easy, others long, still others strenuous. I don’t know about you, but I like hikes of all sizes and shapes. In fact, I haven’t met a hike I didn’t like yet.

Regardless, it is the destination that makes you forget about the process of getting there. Once you reach happiness, all previous pain is pretty much forgotten. Part of knowing how do I pray is staying on the path towards happiness.

Prayer brings down Heaven

Prayer transports you to other worlds, and it brings other worlds to you. It takes you to God’s throne and brings down God’s power to Earth.

Watch and pray!

Gif from Beautiful Pictures of Google Circles.

Could you not but pray for an hour?

In his hour of desperation, Jesus couldn’t count on his disciples to pray. He was in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew they were going to arrest him within minutes. He was so stressed out, he sweated blood drops. He prayed, and he asked his disciples to pray.

They fell asleep.

Do we likewise fall asleep when it is time to pray?

You can’t stumble…

Prayer’s power

Harpoon missile prayers

• How to pray?
• Prayers from the Bible

Recommissioned by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, the USS Iowa saw action in the Persian Gulf War. Her frontward deck turrets make for impressive pictures, but their storied blasting power ceded to superior weapons: the Harpoon missiles.

When I visited the Iowa with my family on Memorial Day in the Los Angeles Harbor, a sailor told how he launched harpoon missiles to simultaneously strike from three different directions an Iranian oil rig where they were mining waters. The poor Iranian Guardsmen had no idea where the attack was coming from when three harpoon missiles all struck from different directions at the same time. It was that easy. Just program the computer and push the button.

LOVE the mustache of this guy!

That sounds like prayer to me. 1) Program the computer = praying. 2) Push the button = God acts. And KABLOOM! The devil and his minions are annihilated.

The war goes on. So there is a continued need for prayer. In the Old Testament, Biblical authors used the imagery at hand to describe God: “He is a strong tower.” Well, in the age of technology, a tower is not very strong anymore. Maybe we should sing about God being our Harpoon missile system.

You don’t neutralize threats by sending Hallmark cards. You must pray:

• for your children
• for your parents
• for your relatives
• for your pastor
• for your church
• for your friends and neighbors
• for finances
• for health
• for the advance of the gospel worldwide

The LA Fire Department’s firefighting tug for ship fires in the harbor put on a show for the Memorial Day tourists.

It would be ideal to live in world without war. But since terrorists fly planes into building to kill civilians for Allah-knows-what reason, there is war. Similarly, the devil is raging war, and we can only counteract his threat with spiritual action. He’s not interested in signing peace. He’ll sign peace only to get us to unilaterally lay down our weapons (prayer). He has no intention of ceasing from his hostile opposition to God’s kingdom.

 

Mimi’s miracles

Mimi, always so vibrant and full of life, at left, with her mother and older sister.

Because Mimi was born with two spinal cords, her parents came from the countryside to Guatemala City for successive surgeries. First doctors saved her life. Then they helped her to walk. Eventually she gained control of her bladder. She would have been identical twins but the zygote only partially split.

Pastor Ludving leads the church and school heroically, at great personal sacrifice.

Ludving and Nelly wound up attending my church. Ludving was about to buy some alcohol to drown sorrows when he heard the praise music and came in. He didn’t get saved. He had already accepted Jesus. The worship exhilarated and lifted him out of despair. They came to the church.

The Door Church in Guatemala City

When he decided to do something, Ludving never did it half-way. Right decision after right decision led the couple to hosting, then pastoring, a pioneer church. When thugs chased me off, the Holy Spirit pointed to him as the man to take over.

Pastor Ludving with Mario Artiga

To my way of thinking, Mimi should be gloriously and completely healed by now. She is not. On Thursday, she is submitting to her umpteenth surgery, this time to correct kidney failure (she has four kidneys, but only one completely developed and only one works). Urine backflow from her bladder is poisoning her one good kidney.

Faith is not always a snap-of-the-fingers miracle. Faith is grinding out the healing over the long haul. I like the instantaneous variety. But not everything is quick like a fire-cracker. Mimi’s miracles have drawn out inexorably for 16 years, her age. The battle is raging dragging on, and the faithful keep mustering faith.

Ludving and Nelly

It’s pointless to ask why. Blaming God like an atheist solves nothing (although I suppose he feels high and mightily justified in his bitterness). That’s not what we want. We want final and complete healing for this precious girl.

Mimi is a spunky girl. Despondency affects her parents, her sister, me — but not her. Thanks for helping us pray for her. Let me know how I can help you pray for your needs.

 

High risk = high return

With my daughter, Rebekah, another would-be actor. Here she’s in her Jewish peasant girl garb. In another scene she seconds as a Moabite.

Ruth is a story about high returns. By going to Israel with her ex-mother-in-law, Ruth faced racial abuse, sexual predators and 15-hour days stooping over under the blistering sun only to pick up enough grains for one meal (that’s the mechanics of “gleaning;” talk about “abject poverty.”)

With my son, Hosea, an 11-year-old “old judge of Israel.” LOL!

Instead, she hedge-funded her way to vast fame and fortune.

Why are so many people willing to risk on finances or with sexual indiscretions but not for God? Just because you can’t see God, Heaven or an immediate return, you are unwilling to go to church, spend time in prayer, serve His kingdom. Just like Ruth couldn’t visualize any realistic benefit when she abandoned her native Moab: Your God will be by God, and your people will be my people, she pledged to Naomi.

Our church, the Lighthouse in Santa Monica, is staging the story of Ruth.

With Pastor Ralph Bowen, missionary extraordinaire, church-planter in three African nations. He played Elimelech.

I’ve dreamed of being an actor about as much as I’ve dreamed of being a Gold’s Gym poster child. (Wild fantasies tend to proliferate in LA!) For the previous plays, I waited faithfully for Sister Pam, the director, to call me up. With this play, I broke down with despair and begged her to let me have a part! I’m Jobab, the money grubber who wants Ruth’s property without Ruth. (Co-Director Eric Photenhauer says I look like a Dr. Seuss version of an Old Testament Jew).

Come Sunday night 7:00 p.m. at 1220 20th Street, Santa Monica, California. It’s free!

No one bats 1000

• How do I pray?
• Prayers from the Bible

The best sluggers only get 450. That means more often than not, they get out.

With prayer, no one bats 1000. Not every prayer gets the answer you want. Sometimes the terminally ill patient dies. And because a prayer-warrior doesn’t bat 1000, the atheists don’t believe in God. (Do they believe in baseball?)

Well, I think that if you’re batting 350, you’re doing well. If only a small fraction of your requests get answered, you’re doing well. Let faith arise in your heart in your heart for just 1 0f 10 answered requests! Because as faith arises, so will your batting average.

And just because you strike out on a majority of your prayers requests, don’t get discouraged. Only God knows why He sometimes says no. We can trust that in His economy, we’re batting 1000.

You should always be encouraged to pray and never be discouraged from it. Ignore the faith-slayers who (wrongly) say that prayer doesn’t work unless you bat 1000.

Brighten your worldview

• How to pray?
• Bible prayers

The church I left behind and now is being worked by Pastor Steven Fernandez

Sometimes Christians adhere to Elijah’s perspective: I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too — 1 Kings 19:10 NIV. Our outlook is bleak, and we whine annoyingly at “sinners.”

So what is God’s worldview? God saw all that he had made, and it was very good — Gen. 1:31 NIV. Now, sinners are bad because they’re sinners. But why are Christians downers? Honestly, I don’t blame a lot of sinners for not wanting to convert to Christianity based on what I see in my brothers and sisters. If that’s joy, then who needs it?

People are true riches

If we truly believe God wins in the end, then we should have a victorious, joyous attitude always. We should pray with confidence, not with woe.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty — Psm 91:1 KJV. We need to dwell on God and NOT dwell on the bad things that drag us down.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things — Phl. 4:8 NIV.

When you go to prayer, don’t bring your rants. Knowing God will convert the sinner, heal the sick, provide for the needy, turn the tide of evil, pray with this mindset.

National Day of Prayer

Santa Monica prides itself as being among the top three anti-Christian cities in California. The others are San Francisco and Hollywood (along with West Hollywood). It is not enough for these cities to ignore Christianity; they feel some sort of moral obligation to hostilely oppose believers.

So it was here, on Santa Monica’s Civic Auditorium patio that the Christians prayed in this materialistic, this atheistic, this hedonistic city. Christians from all denominations, from all ages prayed. There were lawyers, doctors, firemen, police officers, priests and pastors, military personnel, business owners. Even dogs came and prayed — well, maybe I’m exaggerating.

The praying pugs

Don’t think they were just old folks. Two high schoolers prayed for people struggling with suicide, sexual orientation and bullying. It didn’t stay with safe and dainty topics. It got real.

Mediating lawyer Harrison Sommer, a Jew converted to Christianity, prayed that we would have many National Days of Prayer. Yes. That is what this event was about: twisting the ignition key for many, many, many people to be inspired to pray.

To pray for revival, to pray longingly, lovingly. To turn off the cell phone and turn on the prayer phone. To strike up a conversation with Loving Father in Heaven. To seek an answer to the ills that afflict our nation (Boston, Newtown, abortion). To avoid war with North Korea and bring peace to the terrorists. There are no limits to what prayer can affect, no walls that can contain it.

Prayer may have been kicked out of the classroom, but only you can kick it out of your heart — by simply being distracted.

Find inspiration today and every day to pray.

Why the DMV is such a great place!

Because the interminable lines give you time to pray.

What you need for prayer is NOT money, nor talent, nor poetic words, nor theological profundity. What you need is time.

And that’s what the Department of Motor Vehicles gives you lots and lots and lots while you wait only to find out that you’re in the wrong line or that you don’t have some obscure piece of paper and you’ll have to come back tomorrow.

Also good for prayer:

• bank lines
• mechanic shop
• dry cleaning lines
• meetings! (Let the boss drone on about what he thinks is important. In your head, pray.)
• airports and flights

Time-robbers include:

• cell phone
• TV
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Twitter (Why don’t you tweet God instead?)
• did I say “cell phone?”

These are just some of multitudinous ways of distracting yourself from what is truly important: prayer. Money is not the most precious resource; time is. God really appreciates all the time you make for Him!

 

 

Plodder’s prayer

• How to pray?
• Bible prayers
• Persevering in prayer

From It’s a Beautiful World on Tumblr

I’ve long lamented being a plodder: lack of panache, short on genius, without the glut of talent and personality that some people have.

From Grandmas Dreams

Last night I learned the plodder wins the day. The IQ-overflow, overconfident swashbuckler doesn’t want to work. He expects everybody to do everything for him just because their enthralled with his personality. Persistent Igor blindsides him. Whoop!

The plodder goes to prayer. He patiently, persistently, perseveringly goes to God, day after day, not making “vain repetitions,” but continually assailing the throne with desperate needs until the glorious answer materializes. If you’re slogging through the mud, rejoice! The answers coming!

Everybody loves the heroic moment: David downs Goliath, Elijah makes fire from Heaven, Moses opens the Red Sea. The special effects are exciting. But we must realize that hours, days, weeks, months and years of prayer go into the making of that moment.

While the disciples slept, Jesus prayed. (While Jesus slept, the disciples fretted.)

Pray, pray, pray again

• How do I pray?
• Bible prayers
• Faith and perseverance

Or is it “try, try, try again?”

What if Lincoln had given up?

My heart goes out to atheists, agnostics and struggling Christians whose experience with prayer has been negative. Typically, they gave it a try, and nothing happened. No answer. Just silence.

I wish to gently suggest that in many cases, nothing went wrong. You just need to keep praying. The Bible talks directly and indirectly about persevering in prayer.

From Exchangewisdom

Now, if your loved one passed on, I don’t want to sound trite. I want to give you a hug. I don’t know why prayers “didn’t work.” The Bible says that God knows what He’s doing. Many times what we want doesn’t correspond to what He wants. Forgive me if this “answer” doesn’t “answer” your legitimate hurts. I am not criticizing or making fun of your efforts or experience. Some people cannot assimilate old age, sickness and accidents in a fallen world, and plain old mortality. Why is God blamed?

From Pam Boyd’s Blog

In other cases, you simply need to keep praying. God hasn’t responded negative. He just hasn’t responded as quickly as you would like. In Luke 18 tells of an unjust judge. What’s extraordinary about the story is that most parable don’t have an explanation; it’s open to your interpretation. But this one says: Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up Luke 18:1 NIV.

From invivo

The judge accepted bribes, but because a certain poor woman demanded daily justice, she wore the corrupt judge down. Just to get her off his back, he ruled in her favor.

The parable works by contrast: how much more so will the Just Judge in Heaven rule in our favor? But we must continue to pray.

Prayer: refusing ‘acceptable’ religion

Credit: Washington Post

Prayer is about breaking bounds set by secularists, who want to limit Christianity to pious crying.

The day after the April 15 Boston bombings, Christians held vigils for the victims, and the worldly applauded. But the dead stayed dead. Mourning didn’t change our country.

Credit:TheTimes

Trying to constrain Christ to a reduced role of “acceptable” activities is nothing new. When Jesus saw his dead friend Lazarus, he cried. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” — John 11:36 NIV. Crying was acceptable. Raising him from the dead was not. From that day on they plotted to take his life. — John 11:53 NIV. Jesus was taking their thunder.

Credit: The Bible Episode 4

It’s impossible for Christ to remain benign. His followers should not cower either. If you only want to lament the demise of this world, wring your hands. But if you want to see Christ transform this world, get in contact with resurrection power now — through prayer.  I am the resurrection and the life, said Jesus (John 11:25 NIV).

Credit: Prayerprayer.net

Break out of the limitations they set on you. (They don’t conceive supernatural power.) Work in prayer for miracles!

You would think they would have rejoiced at Lazarus’ resurrection. To the contrary, it made them furious (because it meant their loss of political power). But Jesus didn’t play their game. He used power. And that same power is available to us today.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not criticizing prayer vigils and mourning for victims. I would have participated, had I lived in Boston. What I’m saying is that we Christians can’t limit our activities to religious actions devoid of real power. We must pray for our countries, for our cities, for our neighborhoods, for our churches, for our families.

I’m also not talking about being obnoxious. Is there anything worse than a shrill “Christian” scolding the world for its worldliness? No, I’m talking about crying out to God and making impact, not being a self-appointed moral policeman for people who don’t have slightest idea about morality. First, let’s bring people to God, then teach them the way.

The world is eroding. We must resort to prayer.

Prayer: Lord’s prayer as a model

I can but don’t parrot the Lord’s prayer. For me, it serves as a model, a how-to prayer. Here’s what we learn of how to pray (Matt. 6:9-13):

• Our Father – not impersonal, unfeeling, but loving family; not an amorphous force field.
• Who art in Heaven – not only inside us, not a human projection, transcendant, above all in power and in person
• Hallowed by thy name – ultimately we serve Him, not He, us
• Thy kingdom come – ultimately the purpose is reaching others for Christ, not filling our whims
• Thy will be done – ultimately, it’s about His will, not ours
• On earth as it is in Heaven – obviously there’s a great lack of perfection here on Earth that we want to realize, just like Heaven is perfect
• Give us this day our daily bread – notice the redundancy (hence it is important to God) or our provision
• Forgive us our trespasses – we humans daily miss the mark of God’s required perfectness, hence we ask forgiveness
• As we forgive those who trespass against us – it is critical for us to forgive others!
• Lead us not into temptation – yeah, good idea to steer clear of that stuff!
• Deliver us from evil – may we not fall prey to merciless destructiveness
• Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory – it’s all His, not ours

my old church in Guatemala today!

Pray along these lines and you’ll do well! The Lord’s prayer tells you to whom you are praying and for what you ought to pray! I think it’s best to use your own words. Keep in mind the start off: He’s our compassionate daddy, not a cruel tyrant or stone-faced taskmaster.

 

Great in the sight of God is the prayer warrior

This is my buddy, Vincent. He’s just starting out with Christ in the Hesperia, CA, church.

A Christian who doesn’t amount to much in this world should be glad, for he is great in the sight of God. — James 1:9 Living Bible.

I’ve been tripping out on this verse lately. I guess I’ve been knocked down a few rungs. I used to the general pastor in Guatemala, with four churches under my jurisdiction. Now I’m one of approx. 50 kabillion assisting pastors, and I hardly ever get a chance to preach.

Hahaha! No this is not my car. This is my son, though. This car was at the same mechanic where I took my car. My car is a Ford (almost like a Model T… well, it’s old, but not a classic).

I used to be founder and principal of the Guatemalan church’s school. Now, I’m a teacher kicked around by students. Yes, it’s been time to eat humble pie.

But while I have “descended” in worldly status, I have “ascended” with God. I have more time to pray. I have time to write (being too busy to write was my black eye neglected gift for eons). I have more time to pray.

Leanna is one of my nice students. She’s also very funny. She wasn’t feeling well on the day of this photo, and so she thought she didn’t have to answer any questions in Spanish class — hence the post-it on her forehead “Be nice to the sick girl. Don’t ask her questions.”

Did I say that I have more time to pray? That is special. The “lowly” brother isn’t “lowly” to God. He can work anonymously and accomplish a lot more than the church’s showmen. He can pray.

So really, what I said was a lie: I haven’t been knocked down rungs. I’ve been catapulted into new dimensions of ministry with God. Never scorn the ministry of prayer. Kick things up into high gear — pray!

Why pray? For answers to prayer

How to pray? Bible prayers. Answers to prayer.

What has saved me from depression? I largely credit prayer. (Dianna is my wife)

If you want logical explanations, you will most likely surmise the futility of prayer. But if you want results, then you will pray.

An atheist can scorn my prayer times. He can dismember its logic: “If God knows everything and is already motivated by compassion, then why does He need us to pray?” Good argument.

An onslaught of articles, books and programs urges that church is irrelevant. But I still go to church.

So why do I pray? Plain and simply, it works. (It doesn’t reason.)

If you want powerful reasons, become a philosophy major or a lawyer and feel proud of your rhetorical capabilities. If you want powerful results, pray and don’t fret about the anti-God hubbub.

I have seen answers to prayer. I cannot deny healings, salvations, turnarounds, miracles of money. My marriage is happy. Three times God healed my back (from separate injuries).

When it comes to prayer, why? is more important than what? when? where? and how? If you don’t know why, you won’t pray. But if you pray, what, when, where and how are all secondary because God looks mostly at your heart.

Pray a firewall of protection over your life

1. How do I pray better?
2. What sorts of Bible prayers work?
3. How can I pray for finances?

Here’s an inspirational nugget to jumpstart your prayers:

A firewall limits the passing of fire from one building to the next, if we’re talking architecture. If we’re talking computers, a firewall prevents cyber attacks and spam. But if we’re talking Bible, a wall of fire saved the Israelites from being annihilated by their Egyptian pursuers.

Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Pharoah had a change of heart (again!) and raced after them with his chariots and horsemen. In front, the Red Sea blocked. Behind, the world’s most feared army closed in. The Israelites were dead ducks.

Just before the Egyptians fell on the helpless Jews, the guiding cloud (which by night turned into a pillar of fire) settled in between the two, separating them and protecting the Israelites. It was a wall of fire that saved God’s people from the ravenous horde.

Pray for God’s firewall to protect your finances, your health, your family, your children. For some reason, “hedge of protection” is a buzzword in Christianity. You can have a hedge. I’ll go for the “wall of fire.” The devil can’t touch you, when God covers you.

Verses to fuel your prayers:

• Job 1:10 NIV (Satan, discrediting Job’s faithfulness, complains to God) Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.
• Psm 34:7 NIV The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.
• Psm 91:7 NIV  A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.

Brandish real power

There are generals, colonels, lieutenants, sergeants and officers galore in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, but the guy who wields real power is an ex-private first class.

from the movie based on the book

Private Wintergreen’s got the power because he mans the mailroom. He turns down a general’s request to promote a major by intercepting, responding and forging communications. His decisions stand unquestioned.

(He refuses to promote the major because the candidate’s wiseguy dad, whose last name was Major,” named him “Major Major Major.” So Wintergreen reasons the military doesn’t intend to lose its only “Major Major Major Major.”)

Heller with his book

Wintergreen bemoans his demotion from private first class, for going AWOL once. He whines about the loss of “status.”

But it is he who bandies more authority in the Air Force’s operations against the German-occupied Italy during WW2.

Yossarian, the fearful bombardier

Maybe you don’t have rank in church hierarchy. If you’ll just go to the mail room (communications, as in “with God”), you’ll suddenly discover you brandish real power. Prayer is power, and you don’t need earthly titles to get heavenly answers. Wintergreen communicated with the authority of headquarters. When you pray, you deploy headquarters’ might.

100% — not 99%

Among other things, the 99% movement was about the disenfranchised and powerless getting power. It didn’t work because the oligarchy won.

Prayer is also about the powerless seizing power. When in this world, you have no means to deliverance, to health, to change lost friends or relatives. You only have prayer. You feel helpless to do anything, and you turn to God, who CAN do everything.

No power structure, conserving its privilege, is going to be able to subvert God, the Power over every other power. Don’t just stand idly by, wringing you hands, woefully wishing things were different. Seize power and change your world: pray today. God has 100% of the power.

Text without ceasing

It used to be that Bible teachers would downplay pray without ceasing (1 Thes. 5:17) because — they said — it wasn’t possible to talk to someone 24/7.

from http://www.eduinreview.com

We now know this was wrong. It is possible to communicate with someone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The texters do it.

from http://www.etsy.com

You scold your kids for texting at the table, but why? You text in the boss’s meeting. People are constantly texting in church (hey! no hypocrisy here — I’m guilty also). Some people, if they wake up at 3 a.m, empty their bladder and inbox at the same time. Others keep the phone by the pillow.

I’m a teacher, so I know about texting answers. Some students are so proficient, they text in their pockets without evening removing the device to see what they’re spelling. How they see the response is still a mystery for me; I’m the teacher and can’t figure out all their tricks.

So don’t pan prayer without ceasing. It can be done! (If you can stop texting long enough to say Hi to God!)

If you have needs (I do), then text them to God.

Every attempt works

from blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com

Out of frustration, we called it burro-cracy. (Get it? A variation on bureaucracy.)

The burro is not a flattering term in Spanish. When we would try to get paperwork done, they would tell us one thing was wrong. We would go to a lawyer or notary and fix it. Then we would wait in line again, usually an hour. Next they would tell us something else was wrong. This process repeated itself for days and weeks until finally months later through lots of diligence, we would finally get approved.

AARGH! WHY COULDN’T YOU JUST TELL ME AAAAAAAALLLLLLLL PROBLEMS THE FIRST TIME?????????

from blue pueblo (the best pics!)

Thank God, prayer’s not like that. It’s easy. You don’t have to get a bunch of papers signed, notarized, stamped, authorized, officialized. You don’t have to walk for kilometers on your knees. You don’t have to…

All you have to do is talk, and you’re instantly in contact with the Almighty. Every attempt at prayer — no matter how clumsy, no matter how imperfect you are — brings the will of God. I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing — 1 Tim. 2:8 NIV. They may be filthy, but when the hands go up, they become holy.

Vying for attention

SEOs battle to rank for Google’s first page. You have to jump through hoops to discover the inscrutable indices of Google’s bots to get a 3, 4, or 5 that can land you on the first page of search. After months of ingenuity and sweat, you may get it. All this for the attention of the consumer.

To get God’s attention is much easier. As a matter of fact, you’re his page-one top hit. It doesn’t require months, nor weeks, nor days. Not even hours. Just 30 seconds of prayer

You have His undivided attention de facto.

is enough to have His undivided attention. In the Kingdom of God, everyone ranks a 10 because God is omniscient — He knows everything all at the same time.

Actually, it is God who is vying for your attention. He’s doing everything in His power, but you rank Him waaaaay down on search page 157 — or lower. Stop playing hard-to-get, and let God rise in your ranking of things clamoring for your attention.

As soon as you pray, you’ll pop up on His screen. Sooner.

Like a motorcycle gang

Riddle: What’s small but huge?

Answer: prayer.

It is so small that even a child can do it — without much effort. It’s so huge because tectonic plates are moved in the Heavenlies, which we habitually underestimate.

It’s huge because we make a big stink about how hard it is, like it requires soooooo much effort.

Well, it does require a lot of effort, but not because it’s like looking for the Higgs boson. What’s hard is to push out the raucous crowd of activities that clamor for our attention. For some people, 15 minutes of prayer seems like an eeee-t-e-r-n-i-t-y. For me, it is hard to find over an hour.

Nevertheless, when I do pray, I always savor it, I always marvel at the results.

I swear I’ll never give it up. But then the next day the disgusting boisterous crowd of leather-clad activities roars in on Harley Davidsons and refuses to be dislodged. Can somebody come over here and clear these ornery thugs out? I need to pray.