Wednesday, June 11, 2014

What Are the Desires of My Heart?

In the quiet of this cool morning, after spending time in God's Word, He gave even more refreshing from the Bible through meditations from the kitchen sermon, Faith and Prayer, preached by Pastor Mike Allison. I hope that this short writing can be an encouragement to desire to know the Lord's heart deeper through prayer. Most of you are likely much better "pray-ers" than I am and may not need provoking in this area at all. The most desire I have in blogging is to encourage Christian ladies (and I know a few men do read, as they have commented) and write out God's Word, as God's promise is that the Word never returns void; so read if you'd like and if God leads.

I ask myself; what are the true desires of my heart? What are my most spoken prayer requests? It is good to get deep in meditation (thought) with the Lord from time to time and ask the hard questions. I even was taken back to seeking the desires in prayer life early on in our marriage and through the years. Most recently Syd and I have been (along with our friend Mike C) asking for God to send a great revival in our own hearts and among the churches across the country and the world. God has certainly answered prayer at Mike's church, though not at all in the way that we expected. I remember Mike saying, "I just don't see how God is going to do it, with no one else in my church praying along." (this not exact quote, and also I'm sure there was a remnant praying). All we could do was pray and encourage him to keep praying and now we have seen some of the results. Yes, it has begun with a huge church split, those desiring to keep the church pure being lead to leave to start a new congregation. No doubt, this is only the first step on the road to much growth in the lives of these people. We have had much rejoicing over the phone with our friend, Mike!

One huge prayer request that Syd and I have had for some years now (though we have not been nearly consistent enough in bringing it before the Lord) is for sound churches to be planted throughout our state and in neighboring ones. Having come from a home church who's Pastor was a church-planter, it has always been close to our hearts. We are in a dark corner of this United States. More than ever, though it has always been a need, people need the Word of God and the consistent testimony of sound, loving Christians; a city set on a hill.

“And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.” John 14:13,14

The sun peeks through the leaves of the woods outside my window. I've been out with the dogs and have checked out the garden for a few minutes. The dishes are done. it is with my second cup of coffee that I can again take God's Word and look at the verses that I was directed to. Tonight is prayer meeting. I pray that I'll be praying with more faith and fervency than ever, not for simply physical needs, but for spiritual most of all.