''God Did It All For You" by Daniel Padgett

The Power of Prayer

The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be, the mightier the forces against evil everywhere. Prayer, in one phase of its operation, is a disinfectant and a preventive. It purifies the air; it destroys the contagion of evil. Prayer is no fitful, short-lived thing. It is no voice crying unheard and unheeded in the silence. It is a voice which goes into God's ear, and it lives as long as God's ear is open to holy pleas, as long as God's heart is alive to holy things. God shapes the world by prayer.

Prayers are deathless. The lips that uttered them may be closed to death, the heart that felt them may have ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God, and God's heart is set on them and prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; they outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world. That man is the most immortal who has done the most and the best praying. They are God's heroes, God's saints, God's servants, God's vicegerents.

A man can pray better because of the prayers of the past; a man can live holier because of the prayers of the past; the man of many and acceptable prayers has done the truest and greatest service to the incoming generation. The prayers of God's saints strengthen the unborn generation against the desolating waves of sin and evil.

"A-Team"

Holy Hands member, Dee N.(center), finds herself at the center of care for the homeless.

II Peter 1:14 13 Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle [tent], to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; 14 Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle [tent], even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me.

Recently, my mother died in the Critical Care Unit of our local hospital while tenaciously struggling to hold on to life for her last several weeks.  While I prayed and read the Bible to her, she suffered what seemed a massive stoke that shook her body like a fragile tent in a violent storm.  A few seconds later, her body relaxed in peace as the raging storm passed.  It was as if someone had removed the main stay of a tent and it slowly billowed to the ground, empty of its former occupants.  A few minutes later the medical staff removed all the tubes and wires that seemed to tether my mother to her earthly existence.  Her life here on earth was over.  It was time to untether the cords that bound her and fold up the collapsed tent, never to be occupied again.  Her soul was now free from the grip of this world's storms of pain and suffering and grief, unbound by the cords of this life to enter peacefully into the next.  Such was the end and beginning of her life.

I realized that like the Apostle Peter, this life is only a "tent" that must inevitably be untethered from the earth and put off like our day clothes when the night of death comes.  Like my beloved mother, we who have Christ still have hope for eternal life where the storms of life can no longer molest and shake our earthly tent.

I Thessalonians 4:13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

In this we shall find our comfort.  Thank God for His indescribable gift of our mothers and His comfort and hope.

Matthew 5:4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

by Pastor John

Special guests Jose and Lois are becoming regulars at Holy Hands.

Jose loves to play the tambourine with Pastor John during our praise and worship.  Lois loves the "Children's Sermon", sitting next to Pastor John at the altar.

Matthew 19:13 Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, 14 but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”