Prayers for the Week – The Strength of God

My friends, thank you for joining me today for our Prayers for the Week post.  Today I was reminded of the power of Scripture.  During my Bible Study, our speaker referred to Philippians 4:13 as one verse that got him through a tough challenge.  I’m sure that most of you know this by heart, but here it is for you once again:

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. ~ Philippians 4:13

The Strength of God is something that we all need to depend on.  For so many of us, we try to do it all on our own, and inevitably we fail.  As I get older, and learn that this body is not as strong as it was when I was younger, I have learned that while my body may not be strong, my Faith is, and I am learning to rely on God more each day.  When I am weak, I call on the strength of God to lift me up.  When I get bad news, the strength of God is there to support me.  Whenever something happens to someone I love, I have learned through the years that I can do all things — I can get through all things, even grief — by turning to God.  He will give me the strength I need to endure.  Now, please pray for and lift up our praises this week.  Thank you.

Prayer Requests & Praises…

• Here is the latest update from my friend Amanda about her husband Daniel:
  This will be a short update because it’s good news! We received Daniel’s PET results yesterday and they were clean. YAY! They saw nothing even start to light up and no masses that caused any concerns so the cancer is staying in the liver. Surgery is scheduled for 7/31. We have a preop appointment with the surgeon on 7/25 to learn more about the surgery and the risks and recovery. Because the tumor is covering so much of his liver it will be a long surgery increasing the risk of intraoperative hemorrhage. Post op the concern is liver failure because of the small amount of liver he will be left with. But God has given us a chance for a cure. We feel everyone’s prayers and God’s presence through all of this and know He will take care of us!
  Please pray that the tumor shrinks, the cancer does not spread during these next few weeks, Daniel’s healthy liver continues to grow (more than it did in the previous 6 weeks!). Please pray for God to guide the clinicians treating Daniel before, during and after surgery and that he comes through with no complications. And if you feel like praying for a miracle, please pray that Daniel be cured of this wretched disease!
  Thanks to all of you for your prayers, kind words, hats, calls, notes, and love and support during all of this! We could not do this without the fabulous support system we have in place!
• We’ve also got a big praise to share too! My friend Bambi has this update to her medical condition. Here is what she wrote:
  Whew! After 6 hours of scans, tests, and a meeting with my Dr. I am healthy and remain cancer free! My kidney is working perfectly! What a long day, now I’m starving!!!!
• More praise as my cousin’s daughter Julia continues to improve! Here is what was written:
  I am so thankful for all the prayers!! The infectious disease dr thinks Julia is doing good enough right now that we can try oral antibiotics, so hopefully we won’t ever need a picc line!! I’m on cloud nine with this news, please keep the prayers coming and I know she will bee 100% in no time!!Thank you everyone for your prayers!
• On other medical fronts, though, the news is not as good. Please continue to pray for Jim, the father-in-law of my wife’s co-worker Dee. He has a brain tumor behind one of his eyes, and it has spread to his brain stem. Everyone is very concerned for him, so please pray healing prayers for him, as well as prayers for God’s Peace, Comfort, Strength, and Love to descend upon him and all of his family. The stress is causing short tempers at times, so please fervently pray for them. Thanks everyone for praying for this family.
• I learned today of a family that is in need of your prayers. Their daughter was abused by a person they thought was a family friend, and she has had to go through a lot of counseling about this, as has her parents. Please pray for all of them, that God’s Peace, Comfort, Strength, Healing, and Love would descend upon all of them, and that she would know that she is loved, that it wasn’t her fault, and that she would be able to recover from this emotional and physical trauma. Thank you everyone, your prayers always mean the world to me and those that you are praying for.
• Sometimes the words are hard to come by when you are praying. There’s a little girl named Katy who has had so many afflictions ravage her poor body that it’s been hard to put your mind around it all. Well, today we have a huge praise! She has been in a medically induced coma, and today we have this report:
  From Katy’s Mom:
  Katy girl is in there! She opened her eyes… Squeezed the I love you code to daddy… Responded by moving her head no when asked if she was in pain. Huge! She is back to sleep now… Has lots of resting she needs to do.Please pray for this girl, for her family, for continued good news. Please pray.
• Please pray for my friend Kuleen. She lost her Grandma this week, and while she knows that she is in Heaven, it is still hard for her. Here is what she wrote — her words say so much more than I ever could:
  My last Grandma Lucille passed away today at age 94. Widowed from her first husband, she married my Mom’s dad. She was widowed again when my Grandpa died when I was only 5 years old. For the past 41 years she has been my Grandma by choice.I will remember her for scratching my back, playing the piano and singing, and always signing her cards with XX OO. I always thought she looked like the Grandma in the Family Circus cartoons.She was a very faithful woman, and had been ready to be with her God for a while. She passed quietly without illness or pain, and is now with her savior.

  Please pray for Kuleen and her family as they learn what life is like without her. Please pray for their comfort and strength. Thank you.

My friends, I give thanks for you each and every day.  I don’t know if you know this, but I have received so many words of encouragement from people thank me for praying for them — and asking me to thank you for praying for them too — that I’ve lost count.  We have been doing our posts now for well over a year, and the response from all of you has been incredible.  Occasionally I receive a note asking why I’m asking people to pray for things on a Disney fan site, and occasionally I get people that tell me they aren’t going to follow us anymore because of this.  But that, my friends, is very few and far between — overwhelmingly, the response I get is thanks, thanks for listening, thanks for praying, thanks for sharing what is on their hearts, and thanks to all of you for taking the time to pray for them, a stranger, someone they don’t know, and yet, taking the time to lift them up.

My friends, it is my honor to put together this post every week, to facilitate it, and now, let’s give thanks to Him that stands head and shoulders above all of us.  Let’s pray the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray:

Our Father, who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be do e,
On Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.

For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory,
Forever and ever. Amen.

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