This last weekend we attended our church's retreat out at the Wildhorse Canyon Young Life center in Eastern Oregon. The time was great and the speaker very challenging. He spoke on praying for fruit, moving from surviving to significance, not seeking growth in the church but impact, and the prayer that coincides and leads each of these shifts. The talk on prayer was especially challenging for me.
He talked about the way we "protect" God in our prayers. We (I) don't always ask for what I want or need because I don't want God to fail. I want to insulate Him from failure to answer my prayers. So I will pray in vague terms and tell him that He is sovereign.
The speaker also mentioned fasting and said that it increases the effectiveness of the prayer. He quickly followed if we were asked for the theological answer to why this happens the best answer is, "I don't know."
It just seems to be the way that God set it up.
The speaker then relayed a story from his personal life where he was diagnosed with a terminal disease and the elders came and prayed for him. The him'd and hawed about God's sovereignty and His plan for the speakers life and it made the speaker more and more sad. Then of the elders got in the hospital bed with him and gave him a hug and prayed, "Father please let Ed live and serve." It was a simple and direct prayer and it was exactly what was needed. That prayer was sent out to the church prayer groups and then around the world to the missionaries that the church supported. Very soon there were over 10,000 people fasting and praying, "Father please let Ed live and serve."
That was 8 years ago. He has not been healed but lives a normal life. Last week he met with his doctor and he is the only one with this disease in the entire world that has lived this long and the only one with it that lives a normal life.
Another example of this is with my friend David. The doctors could not figure out what was wrong with him and his body just kept shutting down. Again thousands of people from all around the globe started to pray for him and he recovered.

My Dad used to tell me that correlation does not impute causality, basically just because two things seem to be related does not mean they are. And that is why I absolutely love what the speaker had to say. He said that there is not some formula to get God to respond miraculously. God does not work like that. He will not be mocked and His ways are above ours. But He does have the heart of a Father and responds to us in that way. He hears our prayers and answers them every time.

The Israelites prayed for a deliver from the oppression of Egyptian Pharaohs and received it. They cried out at the injustice, the feelings of abandonment, the tortured deaths of their family members. They cried out for the promises of the Lord to come to pass. Their Father with the eternal perspective answered them but he waited for 250 years before He answered them.

This side of heaven we will never know the Father's complete plan nor the effect that our prayers and fasting has on the Father, but until then we are called to make disciples and pray without ceasing.

This week we are praying for the retreat center. We feel like it is something that has been laid on our hearts and we we have changed our prayers to a very simple request. We are asking God for a retreat center by July 1st. Our lease is up the 30th of June. We wait patiently and expectantly for his provision.

We would love your support in this by prayer and fasting with us. We are fasting today and continue to pray this throughout the week.

We love you all and thank you for the support you have always given us.
Here's to the God eternal invisible who is able to do all without us but chooses to use us to bring to Himself the glory.

M&L

Life:
"It seems that when we don't make time to have time we don't have any."
"When God made time he made enough."

The last couple of messages at our church have been about our identity As Christians, we believe we have been saved from the penalty of the actions we have taken against God and mankind, we are being saved from the power of these temptations and will be saved from the presence of these options when we go to heaven. But if we only look at the problem we might have a hard time seeing the solution.
Tim, our pastor, has been challenging us to seek out who we are in Christ. For Leslie and I, simply trying to find a quite minute seems difficult. And we want to start a center for pastors to rest! It seems that who we are determines what we do. By trying to better understand who we are and more importantly who He is, our life is lifted from the mundane to deep meaning; from surviving to thriving with and in Christ.

Please continue to pray and fast for us this week, your support is a great encouragement!

Love
M+L

Life is full of Craziness
This week we are praying and fasting for the retreat center. Specifically that God would give us a retreat center by July 1st the end of our lease. It is a big request but love your intersession for us.

It is not my might, nor by power but by my Spirit says the Lord!

Thanks to everyone who has called and offered their support.

M&L