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Getting prayed for

It’s training camp season here at AIM’s base camp in Gainesville.  We’ve got the Shearmans staying at our home and young people flowing through it.  Many of them just want to hang out and many of them know they need prayer and are going to stick around until they get it.  Sean Smit…
By Seth Barnes
It’s training camp season here at AIM’s base camp in Gainesville.  We’ve got the Shearmans staying at our home and young people flowing through it.  Many of them just want to hang out and many of them know they need prayer and are going to stick around until they get it.  Sean Smith stuck around till 12:30 last night before we finally laid hands on him out on our porch.  Dustin Unkle drove up from Atlanta because he knows there’s life in this house. When Clint Bokelman prayed for him around the campfire last night, Dustin got what he came for. Mark Newland is here from Vancouver soaking it up.
 
So many of us are walking around carrying burdens in life – we need prayer to get free.  Many of us are just a prayer away from a breakthrough.  People need to get prayed for.  Honestly, I don’t know how many people make it in life without the kind of life-giving prayer that happens in our home.
 
After Gary Black spoke last night to the new team (57 of them) of twenty-somethings going on the World Race, he made it easy if you wanted prayer. Just raise your hand. And the rest of us circulated through the crowd praying for them.  I think almost everyone got prayer and many got breakthroughs.  It’s an eager and humble bunch; if God has got something more for them, they are going to go after it.  Guys like Ryan got prayed for by four separate leaders and kept soaking it up.
 
And why shouldn’t they?  Prayer counselors like Mary Lou Jackson and Jim and Marsha Capo have stored up a lifetime of discernment and love praying for others.  God usually speaks to them about what the person they’re praying for needs.  And the results are obvious.  Often I’d look at them and the person they were praying for was in tears or in some way visibly moved.  Prayer does that for people.
 
I don’t understand why this doesn’t happen all the time in churches.  Life is too stressful and our responsibilities too heavy to try and do it on our own.  We need prayer.  We need someone to lay hands on us and pray until God probes the cares of our heart and “the burdens of our heart roll away.”
 
Wherever you are, however isolated you feel, or however self-sufficient and comfortable you feel (maybe especially if you feel comfortable), do yourself a favor today and go get some prayer.  Don’t let pride or inconvenience keep you from it.  It is the church in action and God’s design for us to build one another up and protect one another.  Around these parts, it’s as normal as telling stories around campfires and sipping coffee together in the kitchen the next morning.  It brings life and connection and opens up the kingdom in new ways.

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