Summit Ablaze Stories

       

Pastor Ford passing the torch to Arlington Church of God 

Pastor Kevin Burkholder - Goss Memorial Church (Speaking before their church 'takes the torch).

 I am excited for Goss Memorial to participate because prayer can make our view of God bigger.  When we pray, we release control.  We worship.  We trust.  We acknowledge that we need help and cannot handle things on our own.  In the Bible we see big things happen because of prayer.  We see big things happen because of God's intervention.  And we see God accomplish His plan to glorify Himself.  The place shook where they were praying.  The sea parted.  The enemy was defeated.  Children were brought about in old age.  All because God promised and people begged!

I'm praying my own view of God will expand - daily!  And I'm praying I'll be effective leading others to enlarge their view of God as well.  We're praying God will do big things so we can glorify His name.

Week #1 - St. Lukes Anglican (Pastor Mike Kraynak)

ne of our intercessors reflected on her experience this way:

"What I saw God do in our church community was bring us together.  It was great to have a time to get our eyes off ourselves and fix our eyes on what Jesus is looking at in our county.  We needed something bigger than ourselves..."   
 
I couldn't agree more!  We had a refreshed sense of unity in Christ as our Church came together in special prayer for our region.  We sensed God's presence and leading in our times of prayer, and we even saw some prayers directly answered.  For example, one of the days our prayer focus for the day was on the topic of "education".  That very day, a member of our staff received an unexpected invitation to come and speak with the students at a nearby public school!  As our week drew to a close, our desire to keep praying did not!  As we passed the torch to our new friends at Community Church of Portage Lakes, we found ourselves wanting praying for them as they "run their leg" of the race.

             

 

Week #2 - Portage Lakes Community Church (Pastor Mike Rybka)

We praise God for how He has raised our people up to pray this week.  We set the goal of 100 hours by laying out 115 hour time slots for people to sign up (7am - 10pm every day Sunday to Sunday).  By Monday we had 114 of the 115 hours taken.  Others have called to sign up, and are praying for an additional hour at home since there are no more time slots for the prayer room.  Almost universally the response has been that people have been amazed at how quickly their hour has gone.  We had teens sign up for 1/2 hour each, and they all came out saying that they wish they had the whole hour.  The room is filled with requests, and now we continue to pray with expectation that we will see some exciting answers.