In all the materials I have read over the years concerning various ways to pray for Israel, I do not recall ever seeing cited the verses I am about to share with you this week.

As I was in prayer in the Spirit this week for the intercessors of MV, I began to have a picture of the army of God.

People of prayer must stand against ungodly anger and discouragement everyday. Of the two, anger has always seemed to be to be the more destructive. But over the years I have come to recognize discouragement as a deadly enemy also.

Last week I shared about the importance of not being passive in our exercise of faith.

I did mention to you that faith requires a target: it requires hope. Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is substance of things “hoped for.” Faith needs to connect with our hope in order to bring what we are hoping for into the present where we live.

This week on the Christian calendar is sometimes called “Holy Week,” because this week we commemorate the events between Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday—especially the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord.

This week we end our look at contemplative prayer. We have talked about some practical things along the way—kind of the “how-to’s.” But now I want to give you a little more encouragement to pursue this kind of prayer yourself.

Last week we saw Mary of Bethany, our model for the heart of contemplative prayer, committing an extravagant act of repentance and worship, just a few days before Yeshua would undergo His sufferings for the sins of the world.

Let’s return this week to our study of contemplative prayer. We had been looking at the reviving of Lazarus in chapter 11 of John.

I am going to take a break this week from our series on contemplative prayer to make some comments and observations on something that is overflowing in our media here in the US—the reactions to the Movie.

I’ve been sharing with you now for weeks about the subject of contemplative prayer. This week I want to take “a little side journey” and talk about an incident in the gospels that speaks to the issue of “wasting time on Yeshua.”