Never tell your neighbors to wait until tomorrow
if you can help them now.
~Proverbs 3:28 (TEV)~
Micah Tolleson, my 22 year old cousin, will have the regrown brain tumor removed today. Please pray and stay updated by visiting his CaringBridge site.
This is the day I get to have all six of my grandchildren together for the first time in three years. It’s been three years since we had all of them at once. Pray nothing interferes with a good visit for all of us. Jennie is here and Jason and Becki will come tomorrow. Pray for safe traveling for them. Pray for Boyd who is still in Europe and working in three different countries while his family is stateside.
Continue to pray for Gretchen V. Simpson as she awaits surgery which is scheduled for one week from today. Pray she will be able to endure the pain well this week and the surgery goes well next week.
Thanks to having grandchildren here, David and I got to go watch them bowl with children from the church. It was a good experience for all. Thank God for parents who see that all children get to have good, clean fun with other Christian families.
The youth are home from camp despite a bus breakdown. Thankfully, they were able to get a ride home with another church group. The bus is repaired in Alabama. Pray for Marty Simpson as he travels drive the bus home.
TODAY’S PRAYER
IMB
JULY 1, 2010
“Blessed be the Lord, because He has heard the voice of my supplications!” (Psalm 28:6)
WORLD LEADERS. “Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence” (1 Timothy 2:1-2). Please pray today for Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia (central Europe, south of Poland).
Prayer requests from Eddie Cox, director of IMB’s Office of Global Prayer Strategy, to “Today’s Prayer” intercessors:
Please express your thanks to our heavenly Father, who faithfully and lovingly responds to our many prayers.
Throughout 2009, we prayed to the Lord of the harvest to thrust laborers into the fields, and He responded with 753 new workers being commissioned to serve abroad–326 long-term and 427 two-year missionaries.
We also prayed for the evangelistic ministries of our missionary personnel, and He blessed us with 506,019 new believers being baptized.
Another prayer request was for church-planting efforts, and God answered with 24,650 new churches being established.
We serve a truly amazing God. All praise and honor to Him, the One who loves all peoples and speaks into lost hearts around the world. May His name be high and lifted up . . .
HEAT
PETER USED A powerful metaphor from the world of metallurgy…
When the metallurgist mines the metal, it is in an ore state with a mixture of dross. That means there are inherent corruptions in the metal that rob it of its strength and beauty. In order to bring the metal to its purest state, the metallurgist applies white hot heat until the ore is liquefied and boiling. In this process, the corruptions are boiled out, and it becomes fundamentally stronger and more beautiful than ever before.
What are trials? They are God’s boiling pot. When we initially come to Christ we are dross-corrupted. We are carrying around “corruptions” inside of us that rob us of our strength and beauty. So God, in the grandeur and faithfulness of His redemptive love, boils us. The difficulties that come our way are not a sign of His unfaithfulness and inattention. No, they are an indication of His love. He knows that we are not yet what we were meant to be. He has dug us out of the mine, but we need to be refined.
Now why is this so hard for us to deal with? I am convinced it is because we tend to live with a destination mentality. We want like to be easy, satisfying, and good as it can be, immediately here and now. But, this isn’t a time of destination. Peter says our destination is guaranteed, but we will not have it now. Now is a time of preparation. It is a time of radical, personal growth and chance, so God applies white hot heat to prepare us for the destination to come. Paul David Tripp, “Painful Faith: God’s Story and Suffering,” Lost in the Middle, 197-198
“In this you greatly rejoice,though now for a little while,
if need be, you have been grieved by various trials,
that the genuineness of your faith,
being much more precious than gold that perishes,
though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
I Peter 1:6-7; Hebrews 12: 5-11/
Posted by Mike Benson at June 30, 2010 10:40 AM
Have a terrific Thursday!
Anna Lee
The Prayer Link 