August 2016 Blog Posts (19)

The Sept. 2016 ION Prayer Focus is ready. We invite you to join in prayer for the Oral & Oral Bible-less Peoples and to join our weekly prayer call each Thursday at 2pm (EDT)

Click here to read this month's Prayer Focus:
https://ionprayer.com/2016/08/28/sept-2016-ion-prayer-focus/

While Paul’s instructions are to pray for “those in authority” (1 Timothy 2:1-2), and he specifies praying for “kings” the obvious application is anyone who is in any position of authority over us – President, Congress, Supreme Court, Governor, Senators & Representatives, County, Parish and Local Officials, and Law Enforcement Officers. The benefit of such prayer is that through their wise rule, and under their protection, we might have “a quiet and peaceable life.” Christians are to be…

Dear God, thank you for all the encouraging books, prayer books and testimonies You give us in abundance.

Please walk with us while we are on the journey of praying for our adult children and young grandchildren. The stakes are high and the enemy fierce. Please protect us all and help us to glorify You in bringing the sacrifice of prayer and intercession to You.

Fulfill Your purposes for all of us.

Give us strength and courage and peace and joy and everything else we…

Leaders in the Body of Christ are called, among other things, to be lifeguards. Watching is the key function of a prophet or intercessor. Rescuing is a priority for the evangelist. Guarding is elementary for…

Sometimes God hands us a spiritual “Key:” a sign or token of our mastery of a gift we have or a role we play in the Kingdom of God.  For example, you might realize, as I did one day, that worship is your key to the throne…

2 Corinthians 9:10-15 Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness; you will be enriched in everything for all liberality, which through us is producing thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only fully supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing through many thanksgivings to God. Because of the proof given by this ministry, they will glorify God for…

You occasionally hear God blamed for the condition of the world because He created Adam and Eve already knowing they would sin and plunge all of us into darkness.

Of course you have to consider that God also knew the hope set before us in creation. In Romans 8:18-20 Paul says, "I consider our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that shall be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected…

The school bells ring every fall for many of our grandchildren. One of my granddaughters started mid-August while the others start after Labor Day. The beginning of the school year can be a stressful experience for grandchildren with new teachers, new classmates, especially if they are going to a new school setting. They may have to…

Matthew 22:37-39 - Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” NIV  

From the time that Jesus expanded His audience’s definition of their “Neighbor,” millions of people have traveled across town or across the globe to administer care and share the Gospel. It is a vital part of obeying the Great Commission to “go into all…

The subject of my blog this week sounds a little like it belongs in my other blog, thinkinginthespirit.blogspot.com/ rather than watchininprayer. But in fact, this deals with the attitude that must drive our prayers. Is your life, are your prayers, driven by faith or by the need to manipulate circumstances, people or even God?

Do you approach Your Circumstances in Faith or the desire to Manipulate?

When you face painful circumstances, it is difficult if not impossible…

We don't hear the word blessed much in these days although it is probably not in danger of dropping out of the English language. We need a word for what God alone can do in our lives. There is a sense in which every person and every creature on earth is blessed by God. He gives us food and drink and every breath of air we breathe. But we find the fullest expression of blessing laid out by Jesus in His declaration of blessedness in Luke 6 and Matthew 5. In Luke the blessings are set against…

We don't hear the word blessed much in these days although it is probably not in danger of dropping out of the English language. We need a word for what God alone can do in our lives. There is a sense in which every person and every creature on earth is blessed by God. He gives us food and drink and every breath of air we breathe. But we find the fullest expression of blessing laid out by Jesus in His declaration of blessedness in Luke 6 and Matthew 5. In Luke the blessings are set against…

The problem of racial tensions and/or divisions is not insurmountable. Through consistent prayer together with proper understanding and  applications of God’s words, the Bible, we can achieve improved and lasting unity.  The Holy Scriptures reveal in Genesis 1:27-28 that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”. He created them to be “fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it”. The growing human…

Many of us are, or should be, alarmed about rulings by the supreme court in these days. Our founding Fathers set up a balance of power between three somewhat independent branches of government. But now the Supreme Court of the United States has begun to trump the law and the will of the people apparently without precedent in law or the constitution. They have begun to short-cut our representative government by legislating from the bench. Hence we are losing government of the people by the…