Beginning in pre-school (Kindergarten), and for many years following, my mother said the same thing to me very morning as I left the house.  “Do the best you can, with what you have, where you are, for Jesus sake today.” Only recently, did I discover that she was paraphrasing a quote from Theodore Roosevelt.  I’m not even sure she knew that’s what she was doing, but it worked.  I’ve lived with that daily motto for many years. In my teen-age years, I added the words of a then popular song,…

Each of us has a gap between our Rhetoric and our Reality. In some cases, the distance between the two is enormous. Remember the Jerusalem crowds shouting “Hosanna” one moment and “Crucify Him” just a few days later? There was quite a gap between their enthusiastic Rhetoric on Palm Sunday and the Reality of their hearts when Jesus was on trial.

How can we explain such big gaps between Rhetoric and Reality? Sometimes this is simple hypocrisy, reminiscent of politicians who…

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 203 | Tue 26 Mar 2013



EASTER: UNITY ESSENTIAL FOR SURVIVAL AND WITNESS



by Elizabeth Kendal



Spiritual unity is not the same as unification. Believers will always interpret Scripture differently, observe different traditions and prefer different styles. Spiritual unity rises out of the recognition that all who are in Christ are one flock with Christ as Shepherd, one body with Christ as Head, one people filled with one Spirit…

Please go to www.ipcprayer.org and hit "Newsletter" link at the top.

INTERNATIONAL PRAYER CONNECTIONS

March 2013

“Globalizing Prayer, Transforming our World”

IN THIS EDITION

1. Ten Proven…

Don't miss this worldwide prayer meeting starting at 5 PM, March 24, 2013 here at IHOPKC (International House of Prayer in Kansas City). Join the prayer meeting around the world at http://www.ihopkc.org/prayerroom 

70 hours of prayer

300 main prayer leaders

100,000 prayer gatherings around the world!

See…

Without a doubt, we live in the most distracted and unfocused generation in history. I was in a meeting recently and got rebuked by someone who caught me checking emails on my phone and sending text messages. “Pay attention!” she told me. “It’s disrespectful to be looking at your phone while people are talking.”

Things only got worse when I tried to explain to her that I was simply “multitasking.” Yes, I’ve gotten good at multitasking, which also may mean I’ve gotten…

Dear Praying Friends,

I've just published  4 motivational books on prayer! These books are designed to ignite the fire of prayer in your personal prayer life as well as help you to train others in prayer. See the links to find a description of each one and how to purchase them, and be sure to use this discount code in checkout for each book and you will receive a 20% discount. Send this to your friends. …

If you’re like me, there’s hardly anything in life more frustrating than when you lose something that’s important to you. The day is off to a bad start if you can’t remember where you put your car keys, your cell phone, or the computer file you’d worked on all day yesterday.

Everything else is put on hold until you find what you lost.

On the other hand, nothing is more exhilarating than to find something you thought might be gone forever. Jesus tells…

What Does it Mean to Yield When You Pray?

You may be familiar with the P-R-A-Y acronym.

"P" stands for Praise which is the first step in effective prayer.  Praising God for Who He is, how He reveals Himself, and How He loves you are good reasons to praise Him.

"R" stands for Repentance, which is the second step in effective prayer.  It's about confessing and repenting of anything that has come between you and God.  This includes things such as attitudes that are…

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 202 | Wed 20 Mar 2013



CHINA: NEW LEADERSHIP AND PROMISED REFORM



by Elizabeth Kendal



The first session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC), held in the Great Hall of the People in the heart of Beijing, concluded on Sunday 17 March and, with it, the once-a-decade transfer of power. Named as Communist Party general secretary in November 2012, Xi Jinping has been installed as president of the People's…

We live in dangerous, deceptive times, when it has never been more important to be like the sons of Issachar, “who understood the times” and knew what God’s people should do (1 Chronicles 12:32). In recent decades, many Christians have been hoodwinked by smooth-talking, emotion-stirring politicians and philosophies. Too often, we’ve allowed feel-good rhetoric, Santa Claus handouts, or demonization of opponents to twist reality and sway us from biblical values.

I’m old…

“If we as helpers and fellow laborers with the Lord Jesus, are to share His power of intercession, there will need to be with us as well the travail of soul that there was with Him, the giving up of our lives and their pleasures for the one supreme work of interceding for our fellow men. Intercession must not be a passing interest. It must become an ever-growing object of intense desire for which, above everything, we long and live. It is the life of…

"This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 'Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message.' So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him” (Jeremiah 18:2-4). 

 

We are all in a different place in our Christian life, but…

A Prayer for Pope Francis



Lord, make him an instrument of Your peace.

A shepherd to the lost and least.

A pontiff to the poor and rich,

a pastor to the world.



Where hatred rears its ugly head

may he respond with love…

This week I would like to share an excellent Easter idea I found on iMOM.com. Children love to hunt for Easter eggs. In this egg-citing game your kids can hunt for eggs over and over again without ever being at risk for a cavity from too much candy. Instead of candy they will actually learn the Easter…

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 201 | Wed 13 Mar 2013



PAKISTAN: THE BITTER FRUITS OF A RADICALISED SOCIETY

by Elizabeth Kendal



Sawan Masih (26) is a sanitation worker and Christian resident of Joseph Colony in Badami Bagh, Lahore. For some years now he has wrapped up his day by sharing a drink with his friend and neighbour Shahid Imran, a Muslim. They would sit together outside Shahid's barber shop drinking locally brewed hooch. Though their…

For a couple of years I have been asking the Father to teach me how to be intimate with Him. In the pursuit of it, I read a few books and all the articles I could find that were sane on the internet about it. Yet when I finished, my soul was still fairly dry. I was with God but not in a relationship that I felt was intimate.

I spent hours sometimes trying to get there with partial success.

I tried several techniques some authors suggested with limited success.

I told the…

Over a year ago, my precious wife Mary got her first iPhone. She bought a nice blue case for it, and the phone looks really pretty.

Before getting her fancy new phone, Mary just had a very basic cell phone that she used for making calls and sending text messages. And after having her iPhone for more than a year now, she still uses it for exactly the same purposes—phone calls and texting.

I’ve gently tried to point out to Mary that she is using on a very small…

I’ve recently been captivated by the story of Jesus turning water into wine (John 2:1-11). I’ve concluded that we all have “water” of some kind that needs to be transformed into wine.

Water is an essential, elemental part of life. But in this story it also stands for the plain, the ordinary, and the bland. Wine, in contrast, has flavor and fizz. Jesus said this kind of wine must be put into “new wineskins,” because it is needs room to expand and…

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 200 | Wed 06 Mar 2013



SUDAN: ISLAMIC BELLIGERENCE AND SOARING PERSECUTION



by Elizabeth Kendal



Islamists - a powerful force in Sudan - hold President Gen. Omar el-Bashir responsible for the loss of southern Sudan. Of course he is responsible, for he systematically marginalised, cheated, persecuted and fought the predominantly Christian non-Arabs of southern Sudan while trying to impose Islam on them until all they…