Pray For Me... Pray For Others...

When Landis prays... he really prays. He is like a little
preacher and at times it is almost impossible to keep from laughing.
He goes on and on with original petitions every night.

From Michelle:

Even before Abby became sick, prayer was one of the most important things in my life. I took the Bible's admonition to pray without ceasing literally and ran with it. While I can be quiet in social settings, it is natural to me to keep a running dialog with God, as I go through my day. Life goes so much better when I am focused on serving God and on praying for OTHERS.

I love that people are praying for Abby. You are such a blessing to Abby and our family. But, because what we are going through with Abby is so hard, SO BIG, most people aren't sharing requests with us as much they used to. I really miss praying for things that are on the hearts of others.

I love to pray for both "big" and "small" things. Seeing God bless us by taking care of those little details is a beautiful reminder to me of how much He loves us and how He is watching over us.

One example of this in my life was yesterday when I was instructed by Abby's doctor to bring her in for a blood transfusion, during an ice storm. Abby needed to get to the hospital, but Brent was home with the other children and I was with Abby, 20 miles away, at a doctor's office. With the sun going down, the roads were refreezing. Oklahomans get few opportunities to drive on ice, so I was out of practice and everyone else driving was out of practice too.

Many of you prayed that God would keep us safe while we were driving and He did. Praise God. But what you didn't know was how He provided for us. One of my best friends, Toni, called to check on us, and when she heard what was going on, she offered to drive us to the hospital, stay with us during the transfusion (usually 6-8 hours) and drive us home. Toni moved to Oklahoma a couple of years ago, from Alaska. So we not we not only got to spend some time with one of our favorite people, we were driven by someone who cut her teeth driving on snow and ice.

While Abby was getting the transfusion, Toni read stories to Abby, colored with her and made her feel like a princess. Once Abby was asleep, Toni and I were able to talk. A rare treat when you have a house full of little people. An night that we could have just endured, turned into a blessing. Thank you Toni. You are the best. Don't you love how God takes care of those little details, too?

Would you let us pray for you? I would love to hear what is on your heart and to pray for each of you.

My incredibly talented husband is setting things up so that it will be easy to read everyone's requests, in list form, but so you can also link your blog to ours, so that you can leave more details for us to read and hopefully some pictures too.

Thank you again for praying for our family. I hope you will allow us to pray for you, too.

From Brent:

One goal we have for our blog, is that it becomes a real community of people. One of the trademarks of a community is that people know each other, help each other and pray for each other.

On Wednesdays, we are going to do Pray for Me... Pray for Others to help build the sense of community for our readers.

Because we are blessed with a large community of readers, we know you most likely can't pray for every single need or person on this list, especially as it grows. But by looking over this list on Wednesdays... all of us can pray as God leads us and we can know that each needs is probably being prayed for by a lot of people. This particular feature is near to the heart of my beautiful Bride, so you can know she will be praying for you.

Pray for Me... Pray for Others is pretty simple: list a short prayer request for YOU, and a link for more detail if needed. Then submit a prayer request for someone else, or some other situation that you know about. Include a link for them if available. Be specific.

For example, I might request that people pray for Abby's healing, and link to our blog. Then I could request prayer for a family that we know who's sister was very seriously injured in a car wreck, and link you over to their blog.

Be specific... provide a link for more information. I'm sure that other people will be VERY blessed to have you request prayer for them, and include a link to their blog so that those praying can visit them.

Questions? This is the first week, so if you have suggestions or feedback to make this work better, don't hesitate to email me: brent@brentriggs.com

Pray for Me... Pray for Others - Instructions:

1. Use the form below to enter your prayer requests. You must enter an "identity", and put something in "pray for me" and "pray for others" in order to be included (links to blogs are not required).


2. If you link to YOUR blog, please include the following HTML in a post on your blog so that we can create a linked network of prayers (your link will allow others to find us, and be able to participate; make sure you are in HTML mode when pasting this code).
   <a href="http://www.riggsfamilyblog.com"><img src="http://www.brentriggs.com/prayforbadge.jpg" alt="Pray for Me" width="150" height="150" border="0" align="right" longdesc="http://www.brentriggs.com" /></a>We participate in "Pray for Me... Pray for Others" on the <a href="http://www.riggsfamilyblog.com">Riggs Family Blog</a>. Check out <a href="http://www.riggsfamilyblog.com">their blog</a> to add your prayer request.
   
3. Put out an email or post on your blog and encourage everyone you know to come and join us in prayer.
   
4. Look over the list and pray as God leads. Come back and visit the list two or three times today as it will grow all day long.

Remember... if you don't take the time to pray for others, then on what basis can you really expect God to lead others to pray for you? I created this with both "directions" in mind - pray for you, pray for me - so that we are both giving and receiving as a community which is far more spiritually productive than simply wanting everyone to pray on our behalf.

Truth is, many people do not have a community they can ask for prayer. We hope to become that community for them.

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Let me know if you have suggestions or questions about Pray for Me... Pray for Others. If this is a blessing to you, please leave a comment and let us all know.