Often, when I am preaching on Sunday morning, I have a sleepless Saturday night, or at least partly so. But this was Thursday night and there appeared to be nothing of great significance on my Friday agenda. With her recent death, poet Maya Angelou has been widely quoted. Once she wrote of sleepless nights, \u201cThere are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win its service to my side are useless as wounded pride, and much more painful.\u201d So it was for me, that Thursday night. I simply did what I learned from my prayer-warrior mother, I prayed \u2013 for everything and everyone I remembered. I\u2019ve seen the quote on bumper stickers, and bookmarks, on wallpaper, and wall plaques, on coffee cups and clothing, on church bulletin boards and in church bulletins \u2013 \u201cDon\u2019t count sheep, talk to the Shepherd.\u201d So, it must be a popular subject and I knew I was not alone in my sleepless state. Even Paul, twice wrote about his own \u201csleeplessness\u201d (2 Corinthians 6:5 and 2 Corinthians 11:27) and added in the second reference, \u201cin sleeplessness often\u201d implying it happened to him more than a few times. Next time you have a sleepless night, I highly recommend prayer. Even if it doesn\u2019t put you to sleep, it will be a night well spent.<\/p>\n
Now join me in praying for the following global concerns:
\n* Pray for the annual Cluster Meeting this week for personnel who live and serve in Central Europe.
\n* Pray for those who serve places that observe a Chinese holiday called Hungry Ghost Festival . This is a month-long time where many people believe the gates of hell are opened and the unhappy spirits are roaming the earth.
\n* Pray for Randy & Robin as they go to the Greek consulate to get a Greek visa (they are still trying after being denied twice in two different places).
\n* Pray for Lori and others who serve in West Africa near the locations of the Ebola virus outbreaks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Often, when I am preaching on Sunday morning, I have a sleepless Saturday night, or at least partly so. But this was Thursday night and there appeared to be nothing of great significance on my Friday agenda. With her recent death, poet Maya Angelou has been widely quoted. Once she wrote of sleepless nights, \u201cThere…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}