Last call! We still have a few spots spots available for our “2016 Guided Prayer Retreat” in December at The Cove in Asheville, North Carolina. We’d love for you to join us in person for three days of learning how to have a more effective prayer life and putting into practice what we’re learning as we’re learning it. I believe in the power of prayer so strongly that I’d like to share with you some of the best and simplest ways I’ve learned to pray over the years. We’ll be broadcasting this event for free online so anyone can participate from anywhere in the world, but we have also reserved 24 spots for anyone who wants to join us in person from our broadcast location. If you’d like to join us in person, we’ll need your reservation by next Wednesday, October 26th, as we are finalizing the details of the event now. For those of you joining us online, you don’t need to do anything now. We’ll provide you with the links to the free online broadcast in a few weeks. But for those of you who want to join us in person, please click this link to learn more and to register! Eric

I don’t really know all the ways that experience shaped my life.  Certain events in our lives shape who we are.  We may not talk about them.  We may not even think about them all that often.  But stories from our pasts have the power to churn our stomachs from shame and fear, or to electrify our hearts with cheer.  Each of our lives is shaped by little stories that make up the bigger story of who we are.  We’re a composite of everything in our lives-both terrible and terrific, and everything in between-like a mosaic made up of tiny colored stones, each one representing a story or experience in a person’s life.  When it’s all saiid and done, they make a picture, and that picture is you or me.  What someone’s final mosaic will look like has yet to be determined.  We don’t think of mosaics as easily coming apart, but God’s redemptive grace has the ability to transform our live’s mosaics into new pictures that look much different from the previous ones.  We often feel that our mosaics-our stories-stick with us like bad tattoos.  We either hide them, or we accept that we have them and move on with our lives, if we can.  For some people, their stories are so painful that it’s virtually impossible for them to move beyond them.  They’re unable to envision or move into a new mosaic.

John Christopher Frame

So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord.  Remember the great reward it brings you!  Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will.  Then you will receive all that he has promised.  “For in just a little while, the Coming One will come and not delay.  And my righteous ones will live by faith.  But I will take no pleasure in anyone who turns away.”

Hebrews 10:35-38
The New Living Translation

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