Category: 1. Intercession: Praying

There’s been a pauci­ty of post­ings late­ly, and so I thought I should explain: we’ve been on our annu­al Christ­mas vis­it to Louisiana, so it’s been very dif­fi­cult to get sig­nif­i­cant inter­net time.

Actu­al­ly, I prob­a­bly won’t post again until next year. We got in last night and in less than two hours we’ll be on the road again!

We’ve got to turn around and head down to the Chi Alpha Win­ter Con­fer­ence (called SALT) held near LA. Looks like the car will be receiv­ing anoth­er 1,000 miles or so…

We have around 10 peo­ple head­ing down to SALT. SALT is usu­al­ly a very sig­nif­i­cant time in stu­dents’ lives: peo­ple are trans­formed, filled with the Holy Spir­it, receive spe­cif­ic voca­tion­al guid­ance, and are gen­er­al­ly touched by God in some pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant ways. Please pray for our time there!

See you next year.

I just received this email: “Last evening, Paula Marks, wife of Bob Marks [Bob is on the Chi Alpha nation­al lead­er­ship team], had a brain aneurysm burst. She is cur­rent­ly in a coma in neu­ro inten­sive care unit and is unre­spon­sive. Please keep Paula and the fam­i­ly in your prayers, they need a mir­a­cle.”

Please pray for Paula and Bob. They’re both won­der­ful peo­ple (although I’d ask you to pray for them even if they were scoundrels). FYI: Bob is on Chi Alpha’s nation­al lead­er­ship team and is a vet­er­an mis­sion­ary to France.

UPDATE: On 12/4 in the morn­ing I received this email:
“Many of you are email­ing me want­i­ng a lat­est update on my mom.

She is very ill and the doc­tor told us, that he is NOT see­ing sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments.

We are told that less than 1% sur­vive this kind of aneurysm.…

That does not mean that our faith is gone! Unless God inter­feres she will pass on so we con­tin­ue to pray for a divine mir­a­cle.

Please pray with us for this mir­a­cle because I do know that God does per­form mir­a­cles.

Sev­er­al of you want to know what to pray for specif­i­cal­ly so here it is:

The doc­tor wants to see if her lift 2 fin­gers on com­mand and then he will rec­og­nize that she is not neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly impaired.

That is what I am pray­ing for. I told her that last night and remind­ed her that her strength is in the LORD. PSALM 121 is what we have taped in her room…we are also remind­ing her that it is “Not by might, nor by pow­er but by His spir­it, says the Lord.” Thank you for pray­ing for her! ”

UPDATE: on 12/4 in the after­noon I received this mes­sage:
We just got a call from the hospital…when the doc­tor asked Paula to raise
her two fin­gers- she did.

Praise God for his answer to prayer! The fam­i­ly is very encour­aged, but
Paula still needs our prayers for con­tin­ued heal­ing.

If you ever don’t know what to pray for us, pray for us like the ear­ly church prayed for the apos­tle Paul:

“Be sure to pray that God will make a way for us to spread his mes­sage and explain the mys­tery about Christ… Please pray that I will make the mes­sage as clear as pos­si­ble.” Colos­sians 4.3–4, CEV

In oth­er words, pray these two things:
1) That God will cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to tell Stan­ford stu­dents about God’s love for them.
2) That God will enable us to take advan­tage of those oppor­tu­ni­ties to com­mu­ni­cate the gospel clear­ly and cred­i­bly.

And as always, you can look at our list of prayer requests.

This Thurs­day the new stu­dents will begin arriv­ing at Stan­ford for ori­en­ta­tion week.

As the web­site says, 1,752 fresh­men and trans­fer stu­dents will take part in NSO 2002 from Thurs­day, Sept. 19 to Tues­day, Sept. 24.

Wow.

These stu­dents needs prayer, and lots of it.

1) That those far from Christ would encounter Him.
2) That those who serve Him would remain pure in the midst of temp­ta­tion.
3) That those who serve Him would be bold in their wit­ness to God’s over­whelm­ing grace.
4) That all stu­dents would select their friends wise­ly.

Stan­ford has giv­en us a list of incom­ing fresh­men who are inter­est­ed in get­ting involved in a group sim­i­lar to Chi Alpha. I’ll be con­tact­ing each of them and seek­ing to help them tran­si­tion smooth­ly. I’ll also be pray­ing for them dai­ly: could you join me in pray­ing specif­i­cal­ly for each one of these things?

1. That God would pre­pare them for the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges that are about to be laid at their feet.
   
2. That God would make His pur­pose in bring­ing them to Stan­ford clear to them.
   
3. Most of all, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glo­ri­ous Father, may give [them] the Spir­it of wis­dom and rev­e­la­tion, so that [they] may know him bet­ter… also that the eyes of [their] hearts may be enlight­ened in order that [they] may know the hope to which he has called [them], the rich­es of his glo­ri­ous inher­i­tance in the saints, and his incom­pa­ra­bly great pow­er for us who believe.” Eph­esians 1.17–19, NIV
   

If you’d like to pray for them by name, here they are: Aaron, Aki­lah, Albert, Alfre­do, Ali­na, Aman­da, Arin, Ben, Bran­don, Camille, Casey, Charles, Chioma, Chris, Chris, Chris­t­ian, Chris­tine, Chuck, Collin, Cyn­dy, Cyrus, Dan­ny, David, Dena, Diana, Didi, Dominique, Ean, Eden, Eleazar, Emi­ly, Eric, Jamelia, Jamie, Janine, Jes­si­ca, Jes­si­ca, John, Julia, Julian, June, Jus­ton, Karen, Karen, Katie, Kevin, Kirsten, Lau­ra, Lau­ren, Lau­ren, Lin­dell, Lisa, Lisa, Maria, Mark, Michael, Michael, Michelle, Naima, Natal­ie, Nathan, Nathaniel, Nico­las, Nico­las, Ochuko, Omorin­so­la, Paul, Quyn­hanh, Rachel, Richard, Saman­tha, Steph, Stephanie, Stephanie, Stu­art, Suhan, Tama­rah, Tay­lor, Tim­o­thy, Vic­tor, and Yoko.

We are busy refin­ing our plan for our first few quar­ters at Stan­ford.
Please pray that God would show us His strat­e­gy for the cam­pus!

We are con­fi­dent that God is prepar­ing the cam­pus for us even while
He pre­pares us for the cam­pus. Please pray for our future small
group lead­ers, wor­ship lead­ers, and the oth­er stu­dents God is work­ing
in.

We need to fin­ish rais­ing our bud­get to be able to start on cam­pus in the Fall Quar­ter. Pray that God would con­nect us with the part­ners He’s already raised up!