PRAYER FOR PROTECTION, MISSION AND PURPOSE

Most merciful Father, Creator of Heaven and earth, at the start of this new week, we approach the Throne of Grace on bended knee, seeking Your guidance, direction and Grace in the form of Your mercies, new as they are every morning. Thank You for Your kindness, not just to all generations past, but to us on this day, as we see new horizons, new possibilities, new challenges and new potential pitfalls ahead if we are not careful to stay in the lane, which You have set out for us.

Help us to not just seek favor for ourselves, but to love the unloveable.

Move us to not just do the easy things, but to trust You with the impossible.

Inspire us to not just be like any other, but to believe the Holy Spirit for the incredible.

Stay with us not just through the difficult, but exhort us as we rejoice in  everything winnable.

 

Let us, who are faithful pray to You, immediately when we call short of the mark.

Let us, who are forgiven, forgive others who have trespassed against us.

Let us never walk in rebellion when You call us to repentance thinking You are okay with sin when Holiness is Your standard, without which, no one will see God.

When the floodwaters of trial and tribulation come, may we find our hiding place in You.

When the high and low tides in the ocean of life wash over us, may we be continually covered by the Precious Blood of the Lamb.

When the modern day Babylonians throw Your people into the fires of persecution, let them see that You are the Fourth Man in the Fire.

 

You will never and have never abandoned us.

You protect in times of battle and hail.

You surround us with shouts of deliverance

You instruct us in the Way we should go.

You bring hope when the road ahead seems hopeless

You let us know the days of the wicked are limited and their day of reckoning draws nigh.

 

So teach us to number our days and nights that we may have hearts of obedience, devotion to You and the passion to serve You. For You have surrounded us with Your chariots of fire, which the world has not seen nor will they ever know.

 

Give us this week, a heart to reach the lost or to at least pray for their dark souls, for even the vilest enemy can be made clean by the Word of the Lamb and the power of His testimony.

 

Give us this day, our daily bread – supernatural food, which only Your Spirit can provide that we may found acceptable in Your sight, should anyone of us be called up before You, until we meet again.  May Your gracious kindness and love, in hearing this prayer, move our hearts so that we may be constantly be found praying always in the Spirit, in all prayer and supplication, as Thy Word says in Philippians.

 

Father, most Mighty God in Heaven, we come before You now,  and ask all of these in the most Holy, Precious and the Strong Name of Jesus Who is Christ, amen and amen.

KEVIN'S KORNER: "WHEN MEN AND MOUNTAINS MEET"

This article comes from a member of Finding Noah, a documentary chronicling the journey of an intrepid group of explorers searching for the final resting place of Noah’s Ark.
Great things are done when men and mountains meet. – William Blake

Finding the Depth of Man

The tag line for Finding Noah reads: “Beyond myth, science, and faith lies

KEVIN DEVRIES

something deeper.” But what exactly does that mean? If time can only tell what eternity has to say, what is the depth of this statement trying to tell us? What can be so deep as to be beyond even our faith? Can myth become fact? Will science someday give way to the supernatural? How can eternities weight thin time into what the early Celtic Christians called a “thin place” – a place where anything can happen in time because it has already happened in eternity? 

These deep questions can drown a shallow man. But there is hope beyond hope for all of us. There is depth in the heart of every man that only eternity can fathom. We live in time, but we are made for eternity. When hope only hinders and faith fails, love alone prevails. Hope helps. Faith believes. Love knows. The bridge from hope and faith to love is an act of grace apart from us.

Finding Our Purpose

And from the place where grace dances among the glorious ruins of our original glory, we discover this: We are all Noah. We are all searching for the same mystery that filled a man with marvel (Genesis 6:8) while a world drowned in madness. In Finding Noah, God’s mystery disguises miserable monarchs as mythic mountaineers. We climb misery to find our message. When we find Noah, we find what is most true about ourselves – we’re all exiled kings in a foreign country, wandering a wasteland of wounds who must climb our own Mt. Ararat – “The Painful Mountain” to discover our purpose. Pain encrypts purpose. 

Find your pain to find your purpose. Your destiny is formed and and most often found in suffering. The same is true of your heart. It is the chamber where eternity resides (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The true and greatest journeys are always within. Everything you need you cannot see unless God’s grace has first opened the eyes of your heart to a secret kingdom only the child within can enter (Matthew 18:3).

Finding Ourselves in God’s Mystery

We know from Proverbs 25:2 that God’s glory is secrecy. The glory of monarchs is the search, so God’s majesty is revealed not in mastery but mystery – a mystery that answers our unanswerable questions with God’s unquestionable Self. Mystery that cloaks itself in the shrouded mists of a mountain’s hallowed halls and ragged ravines rustling with the rumor of a King’s return and with it our original glory as well. This same mystery crowns white, wispy peaks with a crown and robes shoulders with majesty as if they were our own. What else can transcend the savage within to crown us as nobles and give us a new and numinous name except the love of God to us as His beloved sons? 

Love is the mountain that conquers us as we climb towards God. We are climbers not criminals. We must descend to ascend and heal. Nothing heals in thin air. We are patients not prisoners. Pain is more than punishment. We hurt to heal. We cannot heal if we cannot feel. Guilt convicts and hurts to heal. Shame condemns and hides to harm. Guilt is good. Shame is bad. Guilt says you’ve made a mistake. Shame says you are a mistake.

Pain therefore is the passport that takes us to places pleasure has neither the courage to go nor stay. It bends our will so we are formed into the beautiful likeness of God’s Son. It breaks barriers so we pass without sound into a great silence. A silence so deep and profound it can only be shattered by the same silvery voices that sung like morning stars when time was only a wrinkle on eternities face. Pain is heavens salty tears dripping into our wounds made by weapons that have both wrought and wrecked us with wonder. It is the final portal we must pass before we enter into paradise where death drowns in dreams of life that never end. Do we know anything before we suffer? Hardly. Death is the final suffering before we truly know.

Finding A New Beginning

Timeless trauma can only be healed with transcendent time. Sometimes we have to travel to the ends of the earth to reach the end of ourselves and find a new beginning in God that never ends.

And what do we find in the end? An Ark? You’ll have to discover that for yourself. In our search for the Ark of History, we found the Arc of our Story. Finding Noah is more than about finding a boat. It’s about a brotherhood found in Christ. Chaos creates calling and misery moves men to climb mountains to make a movie with a message so large it can only be read from the final frontier of the heart. A message from eternity that echoes into time: The greatest discovery in life is Who finds you when you are looking for something else.

Don’t lose heart. If you cannot change your circumstances, allow God to change your character instead. There is great hope in that. More than that, you’ll find a Fathers love awaiting your prodigal return as a true and mythic mountaineer searching for an Ark inside your painful heart. 

Kevin DeVries is an Entrepreneur-Explorer, Author-Adventurer, Inspirational Speaker and loving father of two from Grand Rapids, MI. He has served as a director and consultant for several faith based, nonprofit organizations across the country and is currently the Founder and President of Grace Explorations.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VISIT HIS WEBSITE AND FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS POWERFUL MINISTRY AND THE MOVIE "FINDING NOAH".

THINK ON THESE THINGS - MONDAY

"When the Winds Blow, Which Way Do You Lean?"

(by Guest writer Lynn Mosher)

Lynn Mosher

Have you ever seen a Divi Divi tree? That’s one in the photo. It is almost a national symbol on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao. 

As an evergreen, the Divi Divi trees have inconspicuous but fragrant blossoms. The trees’ pods, wood, and leaves have several uses. Though slow growing, they are capable of growing to 50 feet tall but will almost always be bent at a 45 degree angle due to the constant-blowing trade winds.

Because of this, the trees bend and point to the west, as the winds blow from the east. In Aruba, lost tourists are told to use the trees as a compass.

Some say the Divi Divis are bent over because of leaning into the wind; others say they are bent over because of leaning away from the wind. Either way, the trees have adapted to the winds and grow in spite of them. Their twisted Medusa-like trunks and roots will grow in rich clay soil as well as the sand. 

I love these trees! I love how God speaks to us through nature. Maybe we should consider growing like the Divi Divis. 

When the winds of adversity blow, do we bend because of the blasting currents, or do we lean along with the challenges? If we lean with the trials, we will never be blown over as long as we are rooted solidly in the Lord. We will still have our fragrant blossoms and always point the way to our Savior, being a compass for others to find their way.

Though we will have the winds of temptation, loss, distress, or others beating against us, we can adapt, persevere, and survive, no matter what the situation.

“Then they will be called Trees of Goodness, trees planted by the LORD to show His greatness.” (Isa. 61:3 New Century Version)