"Why is prayer necessary?"

"I think it's interesting that in the church today so many of us ask:
'Why is prayer necessary?'
You know why I think we ask that question?
Because you don't need prayer when you're watching TV...
We don't need prayer when we're mindlessly surfing the internet...
When there's nothing at stake in your walk with Christ...
When there's no risk in Christianity...
When Christianity consists of monotonous motions of routine day in and day out...
You don't need prayer for that. You can do that on your own.

But when you risk everything to glorify Jesus Christ... You need prayer.
When you sacrifice your possessions and your dreams,
And your hopes and your career,
And you lay it all on the line,
And you stake your reputation down on your allegiance to Christ... You need prayer.

When your longing day-in and day-out is to lead people to faith in Christ...
You need prayer.
You rely on prayer.
You are desperate for prayer...
because you are devoted to His mission.
And when the aim of your life is to affect as many people as possible
with the gospel of Christ,
for the glory of Christ,
you will find yourself given over to prayer."

(Pastor David Platt, http://www.brookhills.org)

And today, my few but faithful blog readers... I'm preaching to myself. This message is for me.

Far from the home I love...

How can I hope to make you understand
Why I do what I do,
Why I must travel to a distant land,
Far from the home I love.

Once I was happily content to be
As I was, where I was,
Close to the people who are close to me,
Here in the home I love.

Who could see that a Man would come
Who would change the shape of my dreams?
Helpless now I stand with Him,
Watching older dreams grow dim.

Oh, what a melancholy choice this is,
Wanting home, wanting Him,
Closing my heart to ev'ry hope but His,
Leaving the home I love.

There where my heart has settled long ago
I must go, I... must... go,
Who could imagine I'd be wand'ring so
Far from the home I love.

Yet, there with my Love, I'm home.

(Fiddler on the Roof, Hodel's song)

a strange, disoriented kind of homesickness...

remembering. laughing. missing. yearning. aching. sighing. smiling. wanting. wishing. loving. rejoicing. dreaming. hoping. praying. trusting. life is good.

Love never fails

...love covers all transgressions. (proverbs 10.12)
...many waters cannot quench love, nor will rivers overflow it. (song of solomon 8.7)
...love is the fulfillment of the law. (romans 13.10)
...love edifies. (1 corinthians 8.1)
...owe nothing to anyone except love. (romans 13.8)

"The incarnational witness across cultural barriers... demands... love motivated by love. Nothing less will suffice." (Bashir Massih, 1979)

what I could not dream...

"To dream and want and pray savagely; then to commit and wait and see Him quietly pile all dreams aside and replace them with what we could not dream..." -Jim Elliot-