Thought for the Day

"In Genesis 1:@, the triune God looked over a formless, dark, empty mass. The Spirit of God hovered over the amorphous abyss of raging, chaotic waters. Suddenly, at God's will and voice, light appeared, followed by fullness, order and beauty. That Spirit lives in our hearts. Like those primordial waters, our prayer times are often empty and even chaotic. Yest the Spirit works gently to fertilize our hearts with His Word and enliven our minds to discover His will in these important experiences...

God's design in creating humankind began with the words, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness..." (Gen 1:26). Among other things, this image entails a profound and abounding creativity. For example, God allowed Adam to name all the animals in the garden. Imagine the moment! Adam could make up any syllable, vowel, guttural sound, or combination thereof that he wanted to. Imagine him wandering through the lush, indescribably beautiful garden just creating names at will. God's gift of infinite creativity was unleashed as Adam worked in perfect unity with his creator. Today as we journey in the proverbial garden of prayer, we need to remember these origins. Like Adam, we are made in God's image. The creative possibilities to prayer are vast as we commune with the Father. So, when you pray, be imaginative, just like like God is. It's who He is in you. It is what He made you to do."

Pray!, Sept/Oct 2007 "from zzz...to Zing!" by Daniel Henderson

Prayer requests take many forms at St. Paul’s.  They include: Pastor Chris eyes only, Wednesday night prayer group (confidential requests), telephone prayer chain, and congregational prayer. Click on the link to make your request known.

Please include in your prayers ELCA Bishop Mark Hanson and his staff, VA Synod Bishop James Mauney and his staff, as well as our own Pastor Christine Farrow and her staff.

St. Paul’s parishioners actively pray for the various ministries they carry out. Some of these ministries include: the homeless (Night’s Welcome), the hungry (H.E.L.P. & Meals on Wheels), the military, the veterans hospital, vacation bible school, daily congregational prayer, Wednesday night prayer ministry, telephone prayer chain, donating school supplies and Christmas presents, our mission partner in Wise, VA, and our missionaries in Madagascar.  Please join us in praying for these various ministries.

One of our best characteristics is our prayer life/spirituality. Three foundational characteristics of spirituality are faith, hope, and love. Faith is the belief that God will never abandon or forget us during our time of need. Hope enables us to let go and let God. Hope enables us to hand over our sense of over responsibility, guilt, rescuing, and enabling to God's hands. Love enables us to show concern, and generosity to others.

The ELCA hosts a prayer network of congregations and prayer groups across the United States and the world.  Prayer requests are collected on the ELCA prayer website www.elca.org/prayer and forwarded to participants of the network who offer prayer.

The prayer network is two fold: people who desire prayer go on-line and submit their prayer requests; prayer groups commit to pray for the submitted prayer requests for 30 days.

Once a prayer request is made, the online manager responds directly and/or e-mails the prayer requests to Prayer Network congregations and prayer groups.  Due to the large volume of prayer requests, not all congregations are contacted with every request, but every prayer request receives prayer.  A prayer group from St. Paul’s has been registered.  If you would like to a part of this e-mail prayer group, please contact Pastor Chris at stpauls_pastor@verizon.net. Please give your name and e-mail address at which you would like to receive the prayers. Once on the list, you will be forwarded prayers requests via e-mail as they come.

More information about the Prayer Network can be found online at www.prayingchurch.org.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays~ Soren Kierkegaard

Remember, God answers knee mail.