By Sharon at SheWorships

Acts 12 has single-handedly transformed my prayer life. But before I explain how, let me share with you a story I recently came across that is both funny, challenging and relevant:

There’s a story of a young girl who wrote a letter to a missionary to let him know that her class had been praying for him. But evidently she’d been told not to request a response to her letter because the missionaries were very busy. So the missionary got a kick out of her letter. It said,

“Dear Mr. Missionary, we are praying for you. But we are not expecting an answer.”

For many Christians, this girl’s letter is an analogy for their prayer lives. We pray all the time for the healing of a loved one or the reconciliation of a broken marriage, but we secretly believe it’s too late. We think we already know what God is going to do. So we pray, but we don’t expect a positive answer. More Here...

Photo by Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian

"Marci Rae Beagley, center, and her husband, Jeffrey Dean Beagley, behind left, walk into the Clackamas County Courthouse courtroom of Judge Susie L. Norby for their arraignment."
  -- The Oregonian

An Oregon couple was convicted on criminally negligent homicide.

The couple are believers in faith healing -- so, when their 16 year old son developed a urinary tract infection, they had prayed instead of taking their son to the doctors for modern medicine to take care of the problem.  The son had a complication; he was suffering from a serious kidney disease resulting from a constriction in his bladder that was present at birth. A catheter could have saved his life, and -- a side note -- they previously had lost their granddaughter due to pneumonia and a blood infection because their granddaughter's parents had believed the same way.

I am kind of split on this situation.

On one hand, it is sad that the child had died from something that would have been preventable if only he would have be able to receive medical treatment. I mean, I am sure the parents did not mean to kill their son, but with the loss of their granddaughter, you would have thought that they would have at least possibly reconsidered their stand on no modern medicine. A loss of a child is something that most of us want to prevent. More Here...

  -- 1 Timothy 2:8

We here at Revelife believe the community that prays together grows together.  That's why we offer the community a chance to receive prayer at the beginning of each week.  Perhaps you have been facing a difficult choice, illness among friends and family, or struggles in your faith life.  What ever it is that you are facing, Revelife wants to pray with you.  If you don't feel comfortable leaving your prayer request in public as a comment on this post, feel free to contact us and send us a message with your prayer request.  We will pass your request along to the Revelife prayer team anonymously, and we will pray for you.

How can we pray for you?

How in the world could a miracle be considered mundane? We associate miracles with what is astonishing- with what is amazing or staggering as we find ourselves utterly astounded, dumbfounded and/or flabbergasted by a particular event in our lives. It is a moment that is frozen forever in our memories, a moment totally unforgettable- one that inevitably stirs renewed wonder and awe as we again internally replay those vivid images of that astounding experience. But mundane, dull or ho-hum ordinary? Never!  Is it possible for a miracle to be so commonplace that we confuse it with the day-to-day, typical, unspectacular occurrences of our lives? It just doesn’t seem possible.

This is precisely what took place with the Israelites.

They had been swept out of the mighty grasp of Egypt and its powerful king, the Pharaoh. Yahweh’s hand had ushered the people of Israel (numbering at that time to well over two million) onto a dry path through the Red Sea with immense walls of water bunched up on either side. He then proceeded to destroy the king, daring to follow them with his army into that watery chasm. At the optimum moment, the vast mountains of water surged back into their place. Gone. Swept away forever! Before long, the people of Israel stood at the foot of the mountain of God in Sinai where they received His law in a spectacularly unforgettable display of His divine majesty.

More Here...

In 1835, Charles Finney published Lectures on Revivals of Religion.  One of my favorite sections is a lengthy list of "Consequences of Having the Spirit."  Here are five of my favorite.

1. You will be called eccentric; and probably you will deserve it. Probably you will really be eccentric. I never knew a person who was filled with the spirit, that was not called eccentric. And the reason is, that you are unlike other people...
2. ...It is not unlikely you will be thought deranged, by many. We judge men to be deranged, when they act differently from what we think to be prudent and according to common sense, and when they come to conclusions for which we can see no good reasons...
3. ...You must expect to feel great distress in view of the church and the world. Some spiritual epicures ask for the spirit because they think it will make them happy. Some people think that spiritual Christians are always very happy and free from sorrow. There never was a greater mistake...
4. You will be often grieved with the state of the ministry... Christians often get spiritual views of things, and their souls are kindled up, and then they find that their minister does not enter into their feelings, that he is far below the standard of what he ought to be, and in spirituality far below some of the members of his church...
5. ...You must make up your mind to have very much opposition, both in the church and the world. Very likely the leading men in the church will oppose you.

What do you think?  Are these common consequences of a life led by God?  Which of these have you seen manifested in your own life?  To non-Christians, which of these do you think is most lacking in the church community?