stir up our affections for your son

"but I have this complaint against you. You don't love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen." Rev 2:4-5

Lord, redirect our focus! rekindle our hearts for your son! Help us remember those sweet moments when we were walking alongside you, for your glory, your kingdom, to the ends of this earth. Move us...so that we will return to our first love.

Billy Graham once wrote this, "we tend to put all our emphasis on the body with its pleasures and physical appetites. but the soul also has appetities. the soul longs for God. deep down every person's heart is a cry for something but he doesn't know quite what it is. man is a worshipping creature. he instinctively knows that there is something out there somewhere and he longs to know that something or someone. your soul longs for God. your soul is valuable because it is eternal - it is forever."

Lord, I cry out for all of us realize the very fact that we can find eternal satisfaction in you, not in what the world has to offer in what seems like eternity. Dad, I have a passion to do praise night again in Richmond, not because its fun to play music, but because its for you and because we love you. Lord, I pray that your spirit would fill everyone who would potentially be involved. I pray for revival, for boldness and for your children to return. WE ARE TOO COMPLACENT! Rekindle our hearts. let it burn like fire. YOU REIGN! HEal our land! Open up your floodgates Jesus. May we live like you and no longer focus on the flesh.

the day when all people see your glory, Dad, is the day I will truly die satisfied. all the hurt, all the pain, all the monotonous living. why are we here? why do we live? revitalize us! help us remember! soak me in your clean laundry and I'll come out clean, scrub me and I'll have snow white life. Tune me into foot-tapping songs, set these once broken bones into dancing - psalm 91. transform us. that is what we want this praise night to be about if there will be one at all. if is your will. if it is your will.

more humility, more power and more boldness.

restorer of the physically and spiritually poor?

God, it is me. i've heard clearly now. every moment of uncertainty in my life was wiped away yesterday night. october 1st, you spoke to me. you told me that i was to restore your people, those who are lost, whether emotionally, spiritually, physically ....

it's so amazing that you've brought me this route, through liberal arts training and now into my first year in masters, only to reveal to me the true purpose of my passion in life. to counsel those who are poor in spirit and in body.

i have a passion and a dream to minister to your youth in areas where most dare not enter. Lord, the boldness I've prayed for and the courage I must begin to muster, please continue to provide. Teach me how to be your servant in every context of life.

of all the gifts that compose me, a gentle heart would probably most aptly describe my weakness as potrayed in this world. but gifts as such are weapons in your eyes. be it prayer, or worship, i want to be more intimate with you, to tell the world about you. Lord please give me the opportunities, the one chance to tell someone about you today. give me a supernatural strength but at the same time a humility when i'm leading.

to see nations turn and be transformed, to see you touch lives and restore is a passion that i have only begun to understand. thank you for your revelation, your power and grace.

pray

being in His prescence requires that we become absoutely obedient. theres just no understanding it. our feeble minds aren't capable of understand the notion of sin as God perceives it. everytime i fall, i realize that God didn't spare me because of my prayers or my devotions, but because of his son's blood.

that said, i no longer focus on my sins because focusing on them is simply a dead end trap the father of lies so subtly lures us into. the associations satan helps us draw between our physical realities and our imagination is so subtle that we often compromise as a consequence.

as a result, i must continue to pray like those of the prophets, praying for holiness, purity and revival in our land. no longer let us live like this Lord! save us from ourselves. prompt us christians to act like genuine ones, like that of paul and the disciples. no longer can we conform to the standards of this world. churches today have become so complacent that we have lost the passion, the fire, the drive for your kingdom.

when all christians realize the state of this world, in midst of countless tragedies all over the world (the most current being in New Orleans and Texas), we will fall face down because we cannot help but recognize that God is dissapointed.

yet, hear me when i say that this isn't the end of the story. for those who remain steadfast in him will feast like kings. remain in Him and he will remain in You. stir it up in our hearts Lord. teach us how to love those who are poor in spirit with a love that never gives up, a love that cares more for the other than for the self, a love that never dies (1 Cor 13).

i hope my prayer journal becomes an inspiration for all those back home and abroad to become prayer warriors. we don't neccesarily have to start a revolution. God wants us to stand in secret for now so that when the appropriate time comes, we will be ready to stand again.

in hoc,
benben, benny, whatever you wanna call me.
psalms 141

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