PRIESTLY PRAYER

Philippines Trip Update: I am leaving on Friday at 3:30 am to make my way to Toronto for a 10:00 am flight to Hong Kong. This is a 15 1/2 hour flight arriving Saturday afternoon. I have a layover in Hong Kong for 3 hours and then catch a 2 1/2 hour flight to Manila arriving there on Saturday evening at 7. We will stay overnight in Manila and then Sunday morning fly to Davao city and then travel by car for about 2 hours to Digos city to our hotel. We will begin teaching on Monday morning at the training center. I hope to update you as I go along. You can also check this link <http://trainingleadersinternational.org/trips/183/philippines-may-2017> for team updates beginning on Monday. Please pray for our travel, the four of us on the team, and the Pastors traveling to Digos for the week and the teaching times. President Duterte just declared Marshal Law in Mindanao and cut his Russian trip short to return home because of Muslim conflicts with the military in the South but our country host has told us that this should not effect those coming to the training center or our own travel. God is working so I encourage you to join in His purposes through prayer.

I was reading about the priestly garments in Exodus 28 and was impressed by Aaron's Ephod and Breastpiece. "You shall take two onyx stones, and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel, six of their names on the one stone, and the names of the remaining six on the other stone, in the order of their birth. As a jeweler engraves signets, so shall you engrave the two stones with the names of the sons of Israel. You shall enclose them in settings of gold filigree. And you shall set the two stones on the shoulder pieces of the ephod, as stones of remembrance for the sons of Israel. And Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord on his two shoulders for remembrance." [9-12] And then “You shall make a breastpiece of judgment, in skilled work....You shall set in it four rows of stones. A row of sardius, topaz, and carbuncle shall be the first row; and the second row an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond; and the third row a jacinth, an agate, and an amethyst; and the fourth row a beryl, an onyx, and a jasper. They shall be set in gold filigree. ²¹ There shall be twelve stones with their names according to the names of the sons of Israel. They shall be like signets, each engraved with its name, for the twelve tribes. ...So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breastpiece of judgment on his heart, when he goes into the Holy Place, to bring them to regular remembrance before the Lord." [15-29]
What a beautiful picture of intercession. In prayer, as priests of God [1 Peter 2.9-10], we carry the burdens of others before God with them, and hold them dear in our hearts because of God's grace and mercy and love to us.

As Galatians 6.2 exhorts us, "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ".