Heavenly Father I praise You for being our creator and for making us with a purpose. I praise You sending Christ to the earth as a baby, born of a virgin and endowed by the Holy Spirit. I praise You that Christ has become our advocate in heaven because there is no temptation that he did not have some exposure to. He sacrificed his human life on the cross to fulfill the need for a blood sacrifice for our sins and through His resurrection is now able to offer us salvation and the hope of heaven. I praise You for the Holy Spirit who speaks truth to us and brings messages from heaven to us. He is my comfort and guide through this crazy journey called life.
Holy Spirit my faith has been severely tested this past year and a half. I have had a flooded basement because of loss of power, I lost my new truck because of another truck running a stop sign, I broke my wrist and had bruised ribs from the accident. I had to stop teaching and do light duty which involved listening to prisoner phone calls for four months. Found my son on the day before my birthday dead from a gunshot from my rifle. Lost a fellow teacher who was 39 that died in his sleep. My father-in-law and two uncles passed away as well as two cousins. Yet, I cling to the promise of getting to see You one day and live in heaven. I cling to the hope that is within my heart and rest on the faith that even though I live in a broken world and sin runs rampant, God is still in control and the victory has already been claimed.
Let the fruit of my faith help others to learn to know who You are. Let it be food for feeding their desire to be prayer warriors. Help my faith be strong enough to help others when they face the troubles in life that destroy many people. Let my faith be strong enough that when I petition You in Your throne room that I will have confidence that You hear me and will respond in a way that all will know that You are my Savior. Give me a faith that may pray to heal others, uplift and protect people and to encourage pastors and ministry teams. Help me to pray with a faith that will help congregations be ignited to change their communities and start building Your kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. Help my faith to be unmovable like Caleb and Joshua, to stand before kings and lions like Daniel, to rebuild the church like Nehemiah. Help my faith to be so full of Your Holy Spirit that when I speak I will see conversions like Peter, Philip and Paul. Let my faith be so strong that I can sing and worship even when I am in the worst of environments like Paul and Silas in prison.
I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.—1Corinthians 1:4-9 In Jesus’ name, amen.