Review from December 19th

Greetings 56ers

Hope you had a wonderful, relaxing Christmas break and are enjoying the celebrations and wonders that this time of year brings.

I have been slacking off a little, as it has been 10 days since this lesson happened but here we go anyway.  Our topic of the day was "Do my prayers bore God?"
In the first week of our unit, we talked about how sometimes it seems like God takes a long time to answer our prayers.  So this time, we build on that a little bit.  If God takes so long to answer, does he get bored of us praying about the same thing over and over again?  Does he want us to pray about the same stuff over and over again?

First, we read Luke 18.1-7
Here we read a story about a woman that is persistent with her requests - so much so that a judge gets annoyed and gives her what she wants, just to keep her quiet.  Is that what happens in our prayers to God? Do they annoy him?

Next we read Ephesians 6.18-20
These verses talk about being persistent in our prayers.  What does that look like?  What is something you know God wants you to be persistent about in your prayer life?

Finally, we read Matthew 7.7-11
This is a familiar passage that also tells us to ask, to seek, to knock on God's door to get answers for our prayers.  And as we continue to ask, seek and knock, we will find answers, and see maybe a little God's plan revealed to us (at least in the area we are praying about)

Our prayers don't bore God. He knows what's going on in our lives, but he wants us to talk to him about it.  He wants to hear what we are excited about, what we are battling over, what we are scared about.  He wants us to tell Him about it and ask for Him to help and lead us through it.  As we do, we will see God's faithfulness showing through.  We can be encouraged that God's plan, while it may not always make sense to us, will work out in a way that is better than we could imagine.  We just need to trust Him and keep on praying.

Bonus point time!
As it is our focus for these weeks, and since we all have great things and/or hard things going on in our lives,  I will give a bonus point to anyone that posts or emails us a prayer request that they have.  If you remember 2 lessons ago, we had 3 questions that helped us identify things that we could pray about.  Here are those questions again, to help you figure out what you can be praying persistently about and what you would like us to join you in praying about.
1- What is something hard that you or someone you know is going through?
2- What is something that is making you happy these days?
3- Do you know anyone that is sick or hurting?

That is a place to start.  We want to encourage you to pray.  It isn't a hard thing that needs to happen in a special way - it is just talking to God - like you would talk to a friend, telling Him about what's happening in your life. He wants to hear from you.  And we are praying for each of you.  We would be glad to have anything specific to pray for that you want to tell us about.

Have a great weekend!  See you Sunday!