One of the greatest opportunities that any of us will ever have is to pray, telling God our expressions of gratitude. We all have got a lot to thank him for. We have been blessed and graced. There have been so many things that we have been given. We can be thankful for health, homes, jobs, and family.

And we need to cry out to God for our situations because God is here and God can help. We also want to ask God to forgive us our sin against Him, even for those sins that we committed before we ever approached Him. We come to a God who is ready to hear, and ready to do exceedingly above what we ask, not only in our own lives, but in the lives of others.

But then, there are those among us that don't have those things, and so we need to intercede for them. In the prayer diaries that Cresthill prepares weekly, there are not only items of praise and thanksgiving, but there are items requiring intercessory prayer, and people that we need to be praying for. "God, would you reach down and intervene? Would you turn their hearts toward you? Would you straighten out their situation? Here's a situation, Lord, of someone who has gone off track, who has gone away from you. Lord, would you draw them back with cords of loving kindness. God, here's a situation where we need you to step in. Lord, there are staff positions that we need you to fill with the right person. Lord, here's a building that we need to have built. Here is this and that. And, Lord, here am I."

We need to know that we are talking, that we are communing, that we are listening (and we need to do that) to a God that we call Father. Children of the Living God, let's join together and approach the throne of grace. -Pastor James Painter