Daily Devotional for Wednesday February 18, 2004

Pray for Me

(James 5:16; Matthew 25:21 )

In the past year, Liveprayer has received and sent personal responses to just over 15 million prayer requests. Every day, I personally handle approximately 300. Each year I use my birthday as the one day to ask you to pray for me and share with you specific needs in my life. I know that many of you pray for me and Liveprayer every day already and I want to say THANK YOU.

Let me assure you that it has only been the faithful prayers of friends like you that have sustained me these past 54 months. They have, by far, been the most challenging months of my life, but also the most rewarding. My greatest desire when this life is over is to be able to stand before God and know that from the moment I finally surrendered my life completely to the Lord on August 20, 2000, I gave God everything I had. At that point, I can only hope to hear Him say to me, "well done, thou good and faithful servant."

My first prayer request is for my wife. Other than my salvation the greatest gift God gave me was 20 years ago last October when Nan and I were married. She has been with me through the years of great worldly success, stuck by my side every moment during the 31 months I was in Federal Prison, and has been a source of strength, encouragement, and great comfort during the past 12 years that I have been in full time ministry. Please pray for her to remain in good health and for her faith to continue to increase as she serves the Lord each day as a true helpmate to me in the Lord's work.

Secondly, pray for my continued health. God has richly blessed me with 45 years of incredible health. As I turn 46 today, please pray for the Lord to continue to give me the good health, strength, and energy each day so that I can continue to serve Him to the best of my ability.

Third, pray for my personal relationship with the Lord. There is nothing more precious to me each day than that time I spend with the Lord in prayer and in His Word. It is critical for me to stay in a deep, abiding, intimate relationship with Christ each and every day. He is where my strength comes from. He is where my inspiration comes from. He is where my hope comes from. It is only through my daily walk with Christ that I am able to serve others. What I share with people every day comes directly from my own spiritual well. Pray that my well will continue to be full through my personal relationship with the Lord so that I can be a servant each day as Christ was a servant.

Fourth, pray for God to keep me focused on the work He has given me to do each day. There are so many distractions, constant attacks of every kind, pray that I don't let anything distract me from what God wants me to do each day. Pray that I will stay sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit so that Liveprayer will continue to stay on course and fulfill the mission that God has raised this ministry up to accomplish in these last days.

I love you and care about you so much. You will NEVER understand how special you are to me. If my life ended today, I can honestly say that these past 54 months have been the greatest of my entire life. Personally, they have been grueling, difficult, with incredible challenges on a daily basis. But God has honored my faith, and the faith of friends like you to raise up a work in these last days that is reaching millions worldwide each day that would never hear about the hope and love of Christ otherwise.

I praise Him for over 52,000 people that we know of who have accepted Christ as their Savior since we started. I praise Him for over 1.1 million praise reports as a testimony of His grace at work in the lives of people. I praise Him for using the Daily Devotional each day to challenge just under 2 million people worldwide to serve and follow Him with their lives. Over 16 million people have visited Liveprayer.com since we started and we have received and sent personal responses to over 30 million prayer requests during these past 54 months. 12 months ago, the Liveprayer TV program became a model for taking the hope and love of Jesus Christ to a non-Christian audience on secular television, competing with and consistently beating nationally syndicated network programs. GOD IS SOOOO GOOD!!!

Please know that I am praying for you. I am more excited about the future of Liveprayer than ever before. The Holy Sprit has shown me that by the end of this year, Liveprayer will be reaching over 5 million people each day through the Daily Devotional, we will soon be reaching a segment of the Internet through the new LPeMail that will never hear about Christ otherwise, and the Liveprayer television program will be in most major markets in the country. You see, we have the infrastructure in place, we have a 54 month track record of reaching tens of millions worldwide.

As we remain faithful to the work God has called us to do, He will continue to expand this outreach so that people in the marketplace who are not Christians will know in their time of need they can come to Liveprayer. Just like people worldwide know when they are hungry they can go to McDonalds, people worldwide will know when they are spiritually hungry they can come to Liveprayer.

Thank you again for praying for me and for these personal needs that I have shared with you. Your prayers mean MUCH to me. I deeply appreciate you taking time out of your day to lift me and the ministry of Liveprayer up before the Lord. The Bible teaches us to pray for one another. As I pray for you each and every day, I ask you to pray for me as well. Together, we are making an impact in our world for the Kingdom of God. May we continue to remain faithful to His work until He calls us home.