Bagong UNIDA@Baclaran Unida Church: THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CONTINUING PRAYER!

Monday, November 12, 2007

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CONTINUING PRAYER!

"LORD, TAKE HOLD OF THE HEART OF ELI!"

1 Thess 5:17 “Pray without ceasing.”

TO CEASE means to stop. Is it therefore the meaning of this verse to spend your whole life praying, not ceasing nor stopping even for a moment to do or give attention to other things? If so, then nobody can do this because realistically other things in life grab our attention. How then? Permit me to explain.

When you pray without ceasing for something it means the prayer must be continuing from the moment it began. It does not mean spending your whole life praying but CONTINUING to pray for that something. Same difference? No!

PRAYER begins with an address to God, say, “Lord God Almighty, please….” and ends with an AMEN! But when one focuses on only one request and addresses it to God without saying amen, then that prayer does not cease and therefore continues. Until God answers and one accepts by saying Amen.

This is the principle of THE CONTINUING PRAYER that I learned when Lance Malachi, nicknamed Eli, was born. And my continuing prayer for him is focused in only TEN words: “Lord, take hold of the heart of Eli.” I address it to God and utter them no matter when and wherever I am and I will only say Amen when I hold Eli in my arms and his smile tells me: “Lolo, I am Here.” See you later Eli, in this world and in this life.

There are personal prayers and there are congregational prayers. In the latter the one leading the prayer ends with an Amen and the congregation affirms and confirms by responding Amen!

But in a continuing personal prayer, the Amen is uttered by the person when God answers. Here the Amen means a person’s ACCEPTANCE of the answer whether negative or positive. Job 1:21 “The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

When you pray for something plead for it with out ending the prayer and continue uttering that single request whenever and wherever you are. A continuing prayer until God answers. Pray without ceasing.

NEWS BULLETIN: November 12 in the afternoon Eli was transferred from the Recovery Room back to PICU-II where we pray he will only stay for three days before he is assigned his own room. Praise be to God!

NEWS BULLETIN: Today November 15 Eli is in PICU-II and they plan to wean him away from the respirator. May God heal him completely.

PLEASE POST YOUR PRAYER BY CLICKING COMMENTS BELOW.

1 comment:

bojie said...: “Was that me, Lolo?” And you can only say, “Yes, apo.” Stories have a way of weaving in them the supernatural, but in Eli’s case in won’t be because it will always be the miraculous.
Years from now a little boy will be asking questions and we will say to him, “You are very special.”
And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What [mean] these stones?
Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.
For the LORD your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were gone over:
That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the LORD, that it [is] mighty: that ye might fear the LORD your God for ever.
Jos 4:21-24; 5:58 AM

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IGLESIA EVANGELICA UNIDA DE CRISTO

VISION STATEMENT
A serving and caring church faithfully proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and commissioning every believer to make disciples of all nations.

MISSION STATEMENT
Glorify God by equipping the church in reaching and serving people with the Love of Jesus Christ by the Power of the Holy Spirit.

UNIDA CHURCH has a distinctive name and a place in the history of the Philippines. It followed the prophetic observation in 1903 by Rev. John Bancropt Devins “that Filipino Protestants will be self-supporting”: (Wikipedia Encyclopedia) “In 1932, six of the smaller indigenous denominations formed the Iglesia Evangelica Unida de Cristo.”

UNIDA dared to declare economic independence by turning down American dollars to become self-supporting. It was hard going for them because their pastors did not receive anything from the church and the members built churches on their own without aid from the Americans. But with so much faith in God’s provisions they did. Unida is now 77 years old and going strong.

Jose Rizal dreamed of an economically independent Philippines but that remained a dream. For the country, that is. But for 77 years Unida was free from foreign intervention because they were economically independent.

The IGLESIA EVANGELICA UNIDA DE CRISTO or UNIDA CHURCH, the truly Filipino Protestant Church, was born on January 3, 1932 but the seeds that gave birth to it were sown at the turn of the century. It was preceded by the birth pangs of an independent Filipino Nation and emboldened by the coming to the Philippines of Protestantism and consequently the right to read and own a BIBLE. (For more please click for older post "UNIDA: A TRULY FILIPINO PROTESTANT CHURCH"