christian-fiction

Even then his thoughts did not turn to prayer but to Abbie and to what she would think about his lack of prayerfulness and that surely she would have immediately broken out in prayer. __oesn__ matter now,_ he whispered and felt that he could not cry out to God.~William Drexler the Third

Somebody__ better pray for him, don__ you think? He IS a lost soul.~Pastor John Linton

When some one mortal yet eternal human merely being relying on precisely nothing but the audacious love of his Maker, calls on Him to part the Heavens, well, we are undone.

All this has been happening around them all the days of their lives though they couldn__ see it, then one day, Prayer removes the veil and everything changes. Think of it this way: Picture a man whistling a tune, when out of nowhere, first a harmony joins, then another, and then suddenly he is taken up into a whirlwind of music, countless instruments playing soaring complexities that the man__ whistling is, indeed, a part of, but now he begins to see how small a part; the longer he listens, he realizes that his is not the melody and where he had thought he was whistling alone, the truth had always been the music playing, though never before that moment heard, and now what had been noise becomes symphony.

Properly understood, Imagination and Prayer are directly proportional __he more they pray beyond their bounds, they expand their vision beyond their resources, their experiences, their expectations.

That__ where thinking started, where thinking stopped, where all her prayers so long ago had dried up. She no longer prayed, nor even dreamed of changing her father. Her dreams now played variations on the theme of escape. And they were nothing more than that __ust dreams, just play. She__ been alone at the end of her dreams so many times before and never had God helped her escape her father, because God couldn__, because she would never escape her need to love him.

True Prayer is the work of relationship, where He moves them from mere information about Him to a one-on-one experience with Him, so that now when they talk about __nowing God,_ they mean more than, __ understand what you__e saying about God,_ but also, __t fits my experience of Him.

When young, the humans are all Imagination because Memory is so much smaller a part of their experience, so little of them is grounded in it. As they grow older, however, Memory overtakes their Imagination, outweighs it. But when they pray with ever increasing confidence, they see with an ever-increasing and youthful Imagination and such burgeoning of possibility causes even their Memory to be lightened and redeemed. The scales fall from their eyes and they wait on their Father with the same childlike wonder that watches a sunrise to see what might happen this time.

It had been a long fifteen years. So much had changed in both their lives. Both hearts somehow sadly hardened. __et us just make it through,_ Claire whispered her desperate plea. It was her only prayer, one she said over and over again. An almost cynical laugh erupted out of her as she turned one last time to say goodbye to her father__ tombstone. That was her prayer? That was all she could come up with to say to God? Then so be it.

Tal was looking at Hank when he said, "Just a moment. I want to hear it one more time."As they watched, Bernice found her way to Hank and Mary. She began to week openly, and spoke some quiet but impassioned words to them. Hank and Mary listened, as did the others nearby, and as they listened, they began to smile. They put their arms around her, they told her about Jesus, and then they began to weep as well. Finally, as the saints were gathered and Bernice was surrounded with loving arms, Hank said the words, "Let's pray...

But here I__ like to add to what the Tempter__ Manual suggests. Depression, at its finest, is not a Future that they cannot hopefully construct, nor a shamed Past that hounds them, but an agonizing Present that they cannot escape. We want to disable their Present so that they cannot use it to look Heavenward.

They scold their own hearts but it actuates no real change, only deepens the wound. But they can__ look away from it. Thus, by paralyzing their Present, we beat The Adversary on His home turf. And loop after loop, the depressed haunt and harrow themselves, sometimes for years, when they have only, for a brief moment, to look away from themselves, to look up.

Somehow they fail to see that for someone aggravated by depression, self-help will be useless, indeed, it is precisely the self that needs to be forgotten.

Pain, sorrow, anger, these are all powerful emotions. Allowed to rule and left unchecked, they would destroy you. However, through training and willpower you can choose to harness those feelings and use them for something great.

They think that if they had more belief they would pray more, so keep them lacking. Never let them realize that the opposite is true: If they prayed more, they would have more belief.

You have always known they exist. Everyone feels their presence. Few know the truth. The world of Real Immortals is about to be revealed!

I believe that all things happen under the watchful eye of God and the lessons we learn along the way only serve to make us stronger.

Maybe that was the best part. The beautiful peace that came with living her own story, knowing every turn of the page and tug of the heart was a new beginning.