please help

Family...

just wanted to write a short blog asking, please, for the encouragement and impact of your prayers. The Lord has been incredibly faithful since our return, teaching us and showing us things daily, and we are SO blessed to be right in the center of His hand, and to be continually affirmed that we are right in the center of His plan for our lives right now. We are incredibly grateful for this, and love the confidence that we have that though we are being stretched, He is deepening us as well.

Nonetheless, we have truly felt, in a way I don't think we've felt before, under attack. Everything that could break is broken. If you're a guy, you know what this is doing to Matt. Every difficulty our brothers and sisters here could face, they seem to be facing. God has given us HIS heart for these people, and this is heart-breaking for us both. There have also been a record number of tensions and oppositions these past three weeks, which if you're human, you know this is exhausting, discouraging and hurtful.

All that said, we want to simply and earnestly petition your prayers tonight and over the next few days. It is always said that when you're doing what God wants you to do, you can bet on opposition. Well, the Lord must have some really exciting things in mind for this upcoming year of ministry! We praise Him with our whole hearts in advance, and can't wait to share happier Blogs with you about these things!

We're not asking for your prayers that everything would hurry up and get easier, simply that you would pray for our perseverance, for our encouragement, for strength, for resolve, and that our hearts and desires would only be aligned with His.

Pray, as from an earlier blog, that when man and opposition and difficulty call at us to come away from what God has clearly given us to do, as men and circumstances called Nehemiah away from building the wall, that we might be able to say:
"You thought that by trying to bother and frighten us, we would become discouraged with the work and it would not be done. But now, O God, strengthen my hands." Nehemiah 6:9.

Life IS a spiritual battle, and we are living in a very dark place, that continues to claim it belongs to Satan. We're battling for the truth: this is God's land and these are God's people. Please pray for the strengthening of our hands.

It is SUCH a joy and an encouragement to have you as family and to be able to ask for such an intimate, powerful, transforming and valuable thing...your prayers.

Thank you!