Prayer that Moves God!

2 Kings 20:1-6 is the incredible story of a man who changed God’s will for his life by one passionate prayer! The Lord sends a prophet to proclaim the will of God for Hezekiah’s life was he was to die that day. Talk about some discouraging news, Hezekiah had been ill and all signs pointed to his impending death. Yet, Hezekiah’s immediate response is to pray to his God. He reminds God of his “wholehearted devotion” and the Bible says he falls down while praying and “wept bitterly.” The Hebrew is interesting here as it indicates a sobbing and seizer like motion. This was not some loose, “God’s will be done” type prayer. This prayer was so passionate that he wept and to those around him it looked like he was having a seizer! Amazingly, God changes his will for his life, and adds fifteen years to Hezekiah’s life. God says in verse 5, “I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you.” Do you believe that as you share in a wholehearted relationship with God, that you can move your fathers heart to move in your life? What is standing in your way that seems impossible to change in your life? Have you spent time praying passionately to God about it? Your father cares for you and wants to heal you of any challenge you are facing in your life. One of my first prayers moving to Phoenix was a plea to God to become a ministry that is family with a sense of oneness in heart. Amazingly, Friday night at our devotional, we talked about prayer and spent some time requesting of God to begin to move on our behalf in faith. A spirit of unity quickly came among us as we played games, talked, and shared about our lives loosing track of time and not leaving until after midnight! The family here in the Upsidedown21 Campus Ministry is amazing, as you can barely visit a disciple in our ministry without finding someone else with them! Romans 12:9-10 says, “Love must be sincere…Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” Praise be to our father for creating this bond in our campus ministry.

In Christ,

Mike Patterson

Dangerous Dreamers!

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”T.E. Lawrence of Arabia

There are really two types of people in the world today. There are those who chase after fantasies and ultimately end up not accomplishing anything (Proverbs 28:19). Yet, T.E. Lawrence said there is another type of dreamer who is dangerous, because they act out their dreams with eyes wide open and make them reality! Jesus was a dangerous dreamer of the day. He came into a world void of dreams when the Pharisees dominated the religious order of that day tying heavy burdens on people that they themselves could not keep. His dream was a message of freedom that all men Jews and Gentiles might be saved. One man…with one dream…gave that dream to 12 others, than those 12 gave the dream to 72 others, than those 72 gave the dream to 3000, until eventually the world had been evangelized in their time (Col. 1:23- all had a chance to hear the gospel). The ASU Campus Ministry (‘Upsidedown21′) came together Friday night at our devotional and talked about dreams. Interestingly, Psalm 123 says that the exiles coming back from Babylon to Zion were like men who dreamed. Laughter, songs of joy, and a harvest were all signs of people with a dream, yet also tears of sacrifice are the water to make the harvest grow. In fact, for Jesus’ dream to become a reality he had to sacrifice his own life. What price are you willing to pay to see God’s dream of an evangelized world happen in our generation (Matthew 28:18-20)? Abraham was given God’s dream that he would become a nation as numerous as the stars in the sky (Genesis 12). We read in Romans 4 that “against all hope” he was “fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he had promised.” Our God is a powerful God who can do more than we can “ask or imagine” for His glory (Ephesians 3:20-21)! What we “ask”, that is our prayers, what we can “imagine”, that is our dreams! Do you believe that God will blow out your faith goals in 2008? Ephesians 4:1 says, “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” If you are a disciple of Jesus Christ, you have been called by God to go take His word to the nations. Are you living a life that is worthy of such a call? You see it is going to take hard work to evangelize all of ASU and the surrounding colleges. Tears of sacrifice, time, energy, money and yet that is the price we must pay to see our dream as a ministry and personal dreams come to fulfillment. It is God who wants to give us the desires of our heart when we delight in Him. It was awesome to go through all the dreams that everyone wrote down at the end of devotional and see the great faith God has blessed our ministry with. In one semester, God has brought a campus ministry of 3 disciples too 10 sold out disciples! Our new sister Danielle was baptized Sunday, and prayerfully next Sunday we will have a new brother in Christ Logan as well. The month of January is also exciting as God’s Spirit is moving in the souls of 4 campus disciples who will join us in our call. Many are studying the Bible and God is gathering together a group of dangerous dreamers who are beginning to change the world.

In Christ,

Mike Patterson

Pictures

Associates

www.upsidedown21.com

www.phxicc.org