For all the years I have suffered with my cancer my pain has been surprisingly minimal. But for the past week I have had some severe pain. I just left my doctor's office. To his surprise and my delight, it is evidently not caused by my cancer. But it still hurts.

In his book, The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis calls pain, God's megaphone.

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, He speaks to us in our conscience, and He shouts to us in our pain."

I doubt if it surprises you that police and fire engine sirens or the smoke alarm in your bedroom don't play Beethoven melodies or the latest jingle from a TV commercial. Their purpose is not entertainment but alarm.

Although it may go against most modern American thinking, it is not necessarily the will of God that our lives be filled with pleasure, comfort and entertainment.

Above all else God wants us to hear His voice and respond to His grace. It is through pain and suffering that we are shocked into the realization that there is something wrong in our lives and in the world. Through pain God quickly gets our attention.

Pain certainly calls us to pray. But prayer does not often relieve the pain immediately. And we need to learn to pray while we are hurting. Over the years of minor to moderate pain prayer has been a comfort and joy. This week, my pain increased enough that the pain pills the doctor give me do not take away all the pain. Sometimes they don't seem to do anything at all.

Among other things, I have to ask God to help me focus on what I am praying. I have to ask God to help me focus on other people and greater needs. It is still true that nothing lifts my heart like worship and praise. But I need God's Spirit to keep my attention on His glory.

Of course, we always need God to help us pray. We even need the Spirit of God to teach us what to pray. We need His hand on every facet of prayer. I have become painfully more aware of that.

Lord, I need You not only to teach me, but to help me pray.  

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I seldom hesitate to ask my readers to pray for me. I need prayer in so many areas of my life. I need prayer for spiritual strength. I need you to pray for moral purity. I need prayer for my attitudes and thinking. I need you to pray for my prayer life. I seldom preach now, although I still could and would preach if God gave me opportunities. Prayer is my most important ministry. And in deed I need you to pray for my writing.

I have always worked at my writing. The first thing I wrote for publication was written my sophomore year in college. That was 1968. I have written regularly since then. But I never imagined I would come to a point where I would spend most of my days writing. God had to allow me to be afflicted with cancer before I would consider it. I had to lack the energy necessary to pastor a church before I would consider retiring. And yet He has granted me many years beyond what the doctors thought, to write and keep on writing.

In Isaiah 30:8 the Lord spoke to the prophet.

"Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may it may be an everlasting witness."

I need you to pray that I will be faithful to write. I don't know how much time God will give me. I have six more books planned, if He allows. I need you to pray that I will know what God wants me to write. Most of all I need you to pray for God to use my writing by His mighty power. Just like a sermon, the effect of writing depends upon God. Pray for Him to be glorified beyond all measure by His hand on my writing.

HOME IN THE WILDERNESS, my third and final(?) novel in The Wilderness Series has been released. https://goo.gl/pJA4jK

This Saturday, June 18, 2016, the Kindle edition of HOME IN THE WILDERNESS can be downloaded free. I am hoping some of you will read it and put a good review on Amazon. Most of all I trust you to pray.

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Proverbs 14:34 reads,

"Righteousness exalts a nation,

but sin is a disgrace to any people."

I recently read a speech by Winston Churchill entitled The Defense of Freedom and Peace. It was subtitled, The Lights are Going Out. The great orator proclaimed to Americans who had not yet entered the war that it is the conflict of spiritual and moral ideas which gives free countries their strength. Especially in the light of history resistance against the domination of the Nazis should not be seen in any other way. By some estimates they put as many as 20 million people to death simply because of their race, or their weaknesses, or unwillingness to support the evil cause.

Even 70 and 80 years later we can feel good about our sacrifices to defeat that evil regime. But where are we in the world today? Where are we as a nation? Since 1973 Americans have brutally extinguished nearly 60 million innocent lives simply because we found them inconvenient.

This was not done by our government. We do not have S.S. troops pounding at our doors in the middle of the night. We did this ourselves to those who by any reckoning were the most innocent among us. Most Americans now admit that abortion is wrong. It is interesting to me that many people say they believe abortion is wrong to justify not doing anything about it. We believe abortion is wrong, so we must be free from responsibility before God, or history for that matter.  

But what can we do? I am sympathetic with those who see the crisis as overwhelming. But nothing is impossible with God. Let me suggest three essential approaches to the problem.

First come to this crisis with humility and compassion. We all share in the cultural, intellectual and moral corruption that has swallowed up our nation. This is not simply the problem of churches that did not stand against abortion. This is not simply the fault of another political party or someone else. Most of us would agree that German people who ignored the disappearance of their Jewish neighbors or were afraid to speak up no matter what it cost them, shared in the guilt.

And we who are also guilty need to seek ways of ministering to girls faced with unwanted pregnancy, and unplanned and unwanted children. Do we have means to intervene in the lives of young people who realize they have sacrificed their vision of the future on the altar of sexual freedom?

Next, address the problem with wisdom and intelligence. If we simply demonize political opponents or shout at them in protest, rather than listening to their arguments and seeking to persuade people, we will make little headway in the issue.

Finally, we must face this problem in prayer and worship. We will not turn this evil around without the mighty hand of God. We need to see this as a matter of spiritual war, crying out to God about every issue small and great. We have no greater weapon in spiritual warfare than worship that connects us with God Himself.

The culture of death is a daunting reality. But it is no greater than slavery that the enemy foisted on our fathers a few generations back. Against all social, economic, and political odds Great Britain outlawed the vile trade on her far flung shores. And eventually Americans were willing to plunge ourselves into a horrible civil war.

If your faith is not built on a powerful relationship with Almighty God you will not be able to pay whatever price is demanded of us to defeat this horrible plague. 

Yesterday, I did a water only fast most of the day, as planned. The Lord opened up numerous opportunities to serve others and share the good news of Jesus and that Jesus is the way. At the end of the day, I had the opportunity to share a teaching with a friend via phone about what fasting is all about. (2 Chronicles 7:14).

This morning as I left the house, I observed that it had rained after a season of drought. Lesson: God still answers prayer and is still a miracle working God, like He always has been. He is waiting for us to pray.

Please consider praying for the reign of God and agricultural abundance for the sake of the poor in the Arabian Peninsula as people turn to the Lord Jesus.

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 room, and that when you praise Him you find breakthrough, peace, and renewal. Our strategies for the future come from this place, and our function within His Kingdom is often tied to this key. When we “turn the key” by using this gifting, others are mysteriously drawn to us, and enter into the Presence of God along with us.

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In Matthew 23:9 Jesus spoke these words.

"And call no man your father on earth,

for you have one Father who is in heaven."

It is terribly important to grasp this truth. This is at the heart of the gospel. And the gospel is the heart of Christian theology. When Jesus instructed us to pray to God as our Father, and when Paul said God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, "Abba, Father," the pattern was set for our relationship with God. We are born again into His family, into His embrace.

When I recognize God as my Father, I admit that He is the source of all that I have and all that I am. He brought about my spiritual birth. He suffered all the labor pains. He's covering the cost.

I am physically the product of my parents combined DNA. Even that was determined by God. He determined when and where I would be born. He decided who my parents would be.  More than that, He has determined my spiritual gifts for His great purposes. He plants His spiritual DNA, in me.

He is developing His character in me. When I was a child my earthly father worked with me to develop my character. The summer before my final year of high school I went to work on a farm in a different state, hundreds of miles away. All that spring Dad was obvious in his purpose of developing my character. He did that because he loved me. He also let me know he was proud of me even though he was often frustrated at how slow I was to apply what he was trying to teach me. Knowing God is my Father leads me to submit to Him. It gives me a hunger to spend time with Him in prayer, Bible study, service, and obedience, so He can graft His nature into my heart.

Knowing God is my Father helps me trust Him to provide my needs. If the God of the universe is my Father, I can be at peace about my needs. More than that I can grow in the joy of His generosity. As God prompts me to give more and more, I can enjoy it, trusting Him to provide. If God is my Father, I can risk everything in the adventure of His purpose. My Heavenly Father will take care of me in and even beyond this life.

I have one final word for this blog, although we will never grasp the breadth and length and depth of this reality. If we are God's children, we do not do any of these things to win His approval. We serve Him because are His. We have become God’s children. He loves us as much as He loves Jesus. Your pictures are on His refrigerator. He holds you in his heart.

There are many legitimate motives for praying. But it is important for us to remember that the ultimate purpose of prayer is the purpose of life for a believer. I have written before on Psalm 27:4. It has been a powerful encouragement in my life. This is one of the Scriptures that shines light on the purpose of prayer. It reads,

"One thing have I asked of the Lord. That will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple."

The first purpose of prayer is life-long intimacy with God. David asked to live in the house of the Lord. Even when we come to God with needs, we must first seek God's nearness in our suffering, in distress, in need. His promised nearness, intimate fellowship with Him in Jesus, is better than the relief of our suffering. Recognizing God's presence erupts into worship. We are not to come to God simply because we desire good things He may give us. We come to gaze in wonder at His beauty. He is the heart and focus of joy."

And we come to inquire of God. Inquiring in His temple does not mean we listen to God so we can decide if we want to follow Him. We seek God's wisdom so our thinking, and indeed our lives, will be transformed in His presence. This may be something you struggle with. What is the point of prayer if I am to pray for His will rather than mine? But self-centered prayer misses all that is ultimately good and right and satisfying in life.

Let me ask you who read, to pray for my blog. I believe what I have written today and on other days is crucial for your prayer life. Next week I will write on being prayerfully alert for opportunities to speak about Christ. And I have begun writing a blog for the week after that, on praying about things we cannot understand or accept about God. This is actually part of the book Spiritual Intelligence that I hope to publish this year. Pray that God will use these truths in our lives.

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I intend to post two watching in prayer blogs in a row, rather than alternating next week with my THINKING IN THE SPIRIT blog. So this is PRAYING FOR EMERGENCIES I.

This week I received an Amber Alert on my phone. This is a new function of my phone. In fact, after I received it I got a message asking if I wanted to receive such messages in the future. I automatically keyed in "yes." But, of course part of me wanted to say, "No!" I don't ever want there to be kidnapped children. I can rejoice that that day will come. But until that day I want to know about such terrors so I can pray as they unfold.

Of course an Amber Alert or a screaming siren, even a honking horn can be a distraction. We are tempted to try to find out what is happening. That of course is natural. But let me suggest that we start praying before we do anything else.

Romans 12:12 is one of those Scriptures that God has often used to speak to me. The King James Version concludes that verse with the words, "continuing instant in prayer." William Carrie said he was able to bring people on the mission field to Christ because God helped him be "instant in prayer." Our English word, "instant" comes to us through Middle English and French from the Latin, "in stare," which meant to stand at the ready."

The secret to being instant in prayer is to be immersed in prayer. If I am already praying when I hear the alarm, I will automatically pray for the urgency.

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Your passionate, powerful, privilege

You are not letting your passionate, powerful, privilege go to waste are you? Please stay tuned for a minute and I will explain this question. In this brief space we will review Jesus’ passion and power in prayer. It should whet your appetite for private and public prayer participation which will in turn have a similar effect on your friends.

Jesus’ private prayer practices and his answers caused his disciples to ask their great teacher for a lesson in prayer. His pattern covered the basics so thoroughly that many millions have memorized his prayer pattern. Fewer have studied and benefited from his personal prayer in John 17, asking the Father to unite us by his Spirit as an insider, and for us to publicly wear his badge of love which identifies us as his disciples. His prayer prepared obedient disciples for Pentecost and subsequent revival and evangelism.

Jesus’ unmistakable passion for his Father’s house of prayer for all nations fuels my own passion for prayer. He did not hesitate to cleanse the house of prayer from abuses, so that it could be redeemed for kingdom uses.  How many churches do you know in McKinney that open their doors daily to host regular corporate prayer, demonstrating prayer is their foundational, first priority? I am aware of one. There is a lot of room in McKinney for regular, creative, praise and thanksgiving-based prayer venues.

Personal, public, and persistent prayers of God’s people are desperately needed in our community and world today. Your prayers will be much more enjoyable and effective when they are praise- based, Bible- fed, and Spirit- led.  Since the Word of God IS the Sword of the Spirit, lets’ read, meditate, and pray some of God’s prayers, patterns, and principles recorded in His Word!  These, including giving Him thanks, are sure fire ways of praying in His will. 

All types of prayer are beneficial as illustrated in the famous ACTS acronym: Adoration; Confession; Thanksgiving; Supplication.  We have the privilege to join the 2 greatest intercessors of the Godhead; Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  “Who will say they are not right? Jesus Christ died. Yes, he was raised from death. He is at the right side of God. And he talks (intercedes) to God for us.”  Romans 8:34 “Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” Heb. 7:25  “Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”  Rom. 8:26

As we close our thoughts together, let’s review some attitudes of prayer that attract the Holy Spirit.  These include: humility, servanthood, brokenness, honesty, holiness, desperation, hunger and thirst for God, and vulnerability.  As you allow God to work such qualities in and through your life, perhaps you will rise to seek or start a prayer venue as a leader or follower to serve, inspire, and equip other body members in experiencing the vulnerability James instructs:   ^“Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.”   James 5:16

In this season pregnant with revival, you readers have some pretty amazing “God-sized” dreams! Last week I asked you to send me your prayer requests for the bigger things God has called you to do. And you did. Lots of them, from various corners of the earth. And they are amazing.

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All prayer is not a struggle, but some of the best prayer is like Jacob wrestling with the Lord.

There are several reasons we must struggle in prayer. They are diverse enough that they could not be covered thoroughly in a single blog entry. I will pray about writing a series of blogs on this important subject. But for now I want to overview the issue.

We need to struggle in prayer because of the condition of the fallen world where God has assigned us to minister. In Joel's powerful call to prayer we read,

"Gird yourselves and lament, you priests;

Wail, you who minister before the altar;

Come, lie all night in sackcloth,

You who minister to my God;

For the grain offering and the drink offering

Are withheld from the house of your God.

We need to struggle in prayer over the condition of our country, our city, sometimes our churches. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Have you wept in prayer over someone you love who is rejecting Christ. Have you fasted before God because of things were terribly out of His will?

We sometimes need to struggle to discern God’s will. Have you prayerfully poured yourself out over scripture and circumstances to clearly hear God’s voice?

I also have to struggle over my will. In a sense this is struggling over the will of God. Only saying it that way sounds like God is the enemy. But as a child of God, He is no longer the enemy. He is on my side against the selfishness and foolishness of my sinful nature.

It is almost blasphemous to compare my struggles with that of Jesus in the garden before the cross. But He showed us the right attitude of prayer. Even as Jesus was asking if there were any way "the cup" could pass from Him, He surrendered to His Father’s will. And after He had spent time in the presence of God, Jesus made peace with God's will even though it would cost Him everything. The struggles God leads you through are never so difficult or so crucial. But they are important. And they are a necessary part of spiritual growth.

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To continue our "Better Together!" series on Corporate Prayer, I want to introduce you to a pastor friend of mine. John Whitsett is the Lead Pastor at Lakeside Community Church of the Nazarene in Hastings, Nebraska. I first met him through Pray.Network,  where I read a doctoral thesis he wrote on corporate prayer and revival. John was buried in 15” of snow last week in the Midwest’s “Snowmageddon,” so I had the unusual pleasure of interviewing someone who is normally very busy! 

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There’s no denying it: smartphones are, well, smart. Nifty and immensely helpful gadgets, they seem to do everything we need: connect us to our peeps, answer all our questions, and guide us to our destinations. We grab them when we wake up, and fall asleep with them in our hands. (See infographic, below). We drive with them, keep track of our kids with them, and work better with them. As a nation, we have become addicted to the kind of personal technology that helps us live life, lose weight, look smart, and keep up with the daily grind – yet still fits in our pocket. There really isn’t much a smartphone can’t do – and we like that – a lot!

For those of Judeo-Christian backgrounds, however, the smartphone explosion looks uncannily like a scripture passage in Deuteronomy 6. It reads:

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There is a whole category of people who are called to Christ and have a passion for the nations & for the weak & marginal and have sought to go with a variety of service groups and who are repeatedly told no, don't go, be quiet, just settle down young man.

The reality is that if I were to go to my field of focus, I would probably die in short order because I would of my zeal or I would be disregarded as a lunatic because I would lose all my sleep because the medicines that help me relax & sleep sometimes would be unavailable.

Instead I pray.

I dare say that often my prayer lacks impact that I am aware of. I tend to pick certain countries & prayer goals and remember them as reminded, so I make lists.

Is this unfocussed? No, usually the only times I have observed the impact are when I stop praying and problems happen.

In retrospect, I have however seen the Lord start movements in various peoples that I prayed for and the timing was impossibly too neat to correlate due to chance. God uses our prayers for movements. Over and over, I find that God works far more in my absence than in my presence. He is a big God, and he wants us to pray big, foundation-laying prayers.

If the leaves of the tree in the Revelation of Jesus given to John are for the healing of the nations, then we must plead for that salve to be applied for the salvation of the souls of societies.

Praying requires a whole different category of action, it elevates us to the heavenlies, for we read the divine counsel in the Word and render judgements according to Psalm 2:8: the Son will have the inheritance that is His! HE shall possess the earth. HE is waiting for us to ask. He knows exactly what He plans to do and He is always on the right side of history.

Politicians will fail us.
Disasters are unpredictable.
The devil is dangerous.
The nations are too large for us to reach them in our own power.

But every time we kneel in prayer and cry out for help, God hears and acts. Every time we stand on His promises, the Lord proves His faithfulness. Every time we sit in His presence and ask for the nations, the Lord God sends forth His angel armies to intervene. Every time we fall flat on our faces and humble ourselves before the King of the Universe, the Lord God Almighty rejoices over us with singing and stands in the gaps that we cannot fill.

We cannot fill the gaps for we are sinners,
I am the worst
But He is perfect
We fail. He is faultless.
The Lord will succeed in every intervention He begins.

Our actions, our giving, our prayers, our sacrifices all must flow from our lives guided by the Word of God for them to be effective.
This is why years in prayer are often needed to accomplish what may take a season of actual service.
Then, when the doors close behind us after our work is finished, then the Lord Spirit goes to work most earnestly, with greater freedom than we could ever have.
This is the story of China.
This is the story of Iran.
This is the story of all who are bathed in prayer,
This is the story of all who are bathed in the Spirit.

This is why statistics lie about the future.
Statistics are based on what man sees.
Faith is about what God has promised.
Hope is the certainty that God will keep His promises to the end.
Love is behaving according to this confidence that God is love.

Jesus says in the Great Commission, "Go and preach the Gospel to every creature." (Mark 16:15). 

This week, I was inspired by an idea Kevin Senapatiratne wrote about at Christ Connection. It's a great new "tool" for my missions toolbox, and I asked Kevin if I could share it with others. He is delighted to share this idea with you, too, and you'll find it right here:

Be the Spark to a Great Awakening!

As the summer months come, pray for those who are living in the low lands and along the sea in a country where there have been frequent power outages as well as lack of supplies. Pray that their basic needs will be met even in the heat of the summer. Pray that fighting will stop in their country and that rebuilding will begin.

"Will you help me go to America?", asked a young Yemeni man who left his country to work in another. He sees no future, as he waits tables in a restaurant. He now lives in a country where there are many believers in Christ. Pray that he will hear the Truth and experience the Hope which Christ offers.

Please pray for believers who are currently working on military bases in this one Arabian Peninsula country.  What an opportunity to shine the light of Christ among the most powerful people in these restricted places.  Pray for divine appointments and opportunities to share the Good News with those who are ready to receive it.  Pray that the various forms of the Good News that have already been spoken would take root and bear fruit in God's good timing! 

Pray against the fear of man since the military can be intimidating.  Pray that the fear of God would rule in the believers' hearts and that they would be protected by the full armor of God.

Pray for the believers around the Arabian Peninsula who are struggling with how to share their faith in places where they could face much opposition for doing so. Pray that God will give them wisdom in conversations and boldness at the right moments.

Pray against a spirit of fear or timidity. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile."    - Romans 1:16

PRAYER GUIDE
PTAP is excited to share its new prayer guide for 2016 and beyond! Download the new guide at: http://www.prayforap.com/downloads/countrytopicsA4.pdf.  You can then start praying for the Arabian Peninsula with this updated information.  Please share this with all of your friends, family, and churches.  You can download it anytime from PTAP's website: http://www.prayforap.com 

PRAYING YOUR ANGER

Most of us are familiar with Paul's admonition in Ephesians 4:26,

"Be angry and sin not."

This command requires some thought for most moderns. Both verbs in the original language are in the imperative mode. We are not only told not to sin, but we are commanded to be angry.

This is actually a quotation from Psalm 4:4. Most of us are not aware of this because our English translations of Psalm 4:4 generally read "Stand in awe and sin not." But the New Testament quotes from the Septuagint*, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which renders these words from the Hebrew, "Be angry." Modern English readers, with our many translations of Scripture, have an opportunity to understand something about translation that most readers down through the ages have not necessarily seen. Translating from one language to another can be complicated. The root of the Hebrew word in Psalm 4:4 means to tremble. It is used for trembling from great emotion, agitation, extreme awe, anger or fear. If your prayers are always calm, you are missing something. This reminds me of Hebrews 5:7. "In the days of his flesh Jesus lifted up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears." Like God the Father, Jesus was angry from time to time. He demonstrated it when He drove the money changers from the temple. He trembled with anger as He stood at the tomb of Lazarus. He was angry at the stubborn scribes and Pharisees who perverted the law of God.

We are not sure how to respond to this. We may want to reprimand the Lord. "Now Jesus, we mustn't get angry." But there are times when not getting mad is sin. Of course, anger can also be dangerously sinful. So how do we find the balance of sinless anger?  And how do we keep the sun from setting on our wrath? We need to pray over our anger.

Psalm 4:4 completes the command, "Commune with your own heart on your bed, and be still." There are two applications of this. First, we need to commune with God. And we also need to talk to our own hearts in the presence of God.  

We need to wrestle in prayer over the reason we are angry. Am I angry because something is wrong or because it offends me? I may need to repent of my reasons for being angry. But if something is truly wrong, if it perverts or destroys something holy, then I need to join God in anger. I also need to put what angers me into the hands of God. Until I have communed with God over something, I will not know what I should do about what angers me. And by praying I recognize that even if I need to act on something, God is the only one who can make things right.

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*I believe this is always true, but I have never read this anywhere or traced it out myself.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if our entire nation joined together in prayer for America, just like the Israelites convened at the sound of the trumpet to pray? Now, more than ever, our government needs prayer. Our families need us to pray. And we need God to heal our land. Thankfully, thousands of Americans are planning to pray together this week, and you can be a part of this historic event.

Thursday, May 5, 2016, is the National Day of Prayer, a day set aside for prayer by Presidential order since 1988. Here's a list of 10 things you can do to strengthen your prayer life on this national day of prayer:​

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But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, I you of little faith?  

Matthew 6:30

Prayer is the first expression of faith. If you believe in God, you will pray. Praying faith is propositional. We trust what Scripture tells us about God. By faith we risk ourselves in the confidence that God is able to meet our needs. We believe that the One who made us knows what we need before we ask Him. We believe that He who feeds the sparrows and clothes the lily will provide what we need.

But praying faith is also personal. We not only believe that Almighty God can meet our needs, we trust in His love for us. We do not just trust God to give us what we want. We can know that God loves us even when He withholds what we want or think we need. By faith we throw ourselves into God's embrace. I remember being terrified up on a roof as a child. I yelled and screamed. My father came and stretched his arms up to me. "Jump, David." Closing my eyes and gritting my teeth, I jumped into my father's arms.  

Praying faith is exclusive. We often hear faith touted as if it were a good in itself. But I would not have survived if I put my faith in the sidewalk to catch me. In prayer we decide to put faith in God rather than in our doubts or fears, rather than our wants and thoughts, rather than the goals and promises of the world around us.

I need to write on faith again next week. I want to key on the words, "their faith" in Matthew 9:2.

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