ChosenRebel's Blog

Wednesday is for Prayer

I would prefer to talk about prayer rather than dole out prayer requests. But you, the growing audience for this blog have been traveling with me in the journey of exploration into what it means to be Intensely Local in focus and so I want to share some prayer requests that flow out of our neighborhood.

Right now, we have two families in major crisis on our block. Children are suffering and are going to suffer more. A wave of sin is threatening to sweep through the block like a tidal wave leaving destruction in its wake.  My heart is heavy for my neighbors pain.

Please pray:

1. Pray that truth would be revealed.
2. Pray that children would be protected.
3. Pray that God’s people who be fortified in faith and courage.
4. Pray that God’s people would be great lovers and servants.
5. Pray that Stephnie and I would be wise as we try to minister gospel-hope to hurting people.

Thanks for your partnership with us.  Below, I have cut and pasted a portion of an earlier post on what intensely local prayer looks like. God is putting real tinder in our souls for our neighbors. It is fuel for passionate prayer, but it isn’t comfortable.

Intensely local prayer is not content to pray for “God to bless everyone.”  It flows from a real life engagement with the sorrows, joys, crises and triumphs, hopes and disappointments of our neighbors. It is passionate because it is personal.

Relational connectedness is the fuel of intensely local prayer. When we weep with our neighbors, when we celebrate with our neighbors, when we know their private agonies and their incapacitating fears, when we rescue their sons and daughters from a male-absent world; when we serve along side them and lay hold of their dreams and aspirations–these are the both the fuel and the content of our prayers. This is the “matter” that God’s Spirit uses to inflame our prayer with fervor and life.

And that is why most of us pray such feeble prayers.  There is no tinder of knowledge and relationship for the Spirit of God to ignite.

God is giving us tinder.