Major Milestone PASSED and Requesting Your Best Prayers

[John S Oliver]

 

Prayerful Friend

 

This is an announcement of a BIG turning point in my life and ministry.

 

I have been STRUGGLING for years to get to this point.

 

I have published a FEW lessons online AND I have a game plan to publish MANY more.

 

DOZENS of others have prayed for me to get here. I ask for your best prayers so that I will gain the momentum to be used by God reach MANY others in the coming weeks and months.

 

I wish this  message was much shorter. But I do not know how to get across all the important points in a briefer way.

 

Please bear with me. Read to the end and then pray fervently.

BACKGROUND

FINALLY after YEARS of researching, learning and preparing I published a few videos online this week that will lead to an ecourse and an online community named Let’s Pray Better.

 

I THANK God for answering hundreds of prayer by others and me.

 

I have been a Christian for 40 years. The same thing that remained constant all those decades. I wanted to pray better.

 

I have been blessed to have met people who have prayed for me and I have witnessed the answers to those prayers. But my prayer life was weak and sometimes nonexistent.

 

I have been disappointed and resentful that there was not much more teaching or preaching about prayer in the Body of Christ.

 

I have been mad at God and at pastors for not training me in such an essential skill.

 

Then more than a year ago God opened a door for me to preach on Saturdays at a small church. I preached on many topics including prayer. I found that there are plenty of lessons in the Bible about prayer. And I shared with them from my experiences as well as observations.

DEVELOPMENTS

It is one thing to speak publically to those gathered for a chapel service. And it is another thing to offer a well organized set of short videos with lots of practical applications online.

 

I have felt prompted for years to minister online. I have invested hundreds of hours learning how it is done. I have studied online by learning from podcasts, instructional videos, blog posts and ecourses. There is an abundance of instruction available. I took lots of notes and put hundreds of links into huge online mind maps.  

 

I found that there are many thousands of people that have left their corporate jobs and are earning a comfortable living teaching online.

 

There are no shortage of those that hype getting rich quick. But there are some that are sane and realistic. Those are the ones that I follow.

TRANSITION

After much learning, I feel like I am ready to launch. Plus there has been some motivation from my thin income stream to get this far.

 

A few days ago I published the first few videos online and launched a Facebook Group. These 7 short videos are of me dramatically reading what I named Some Prayers and Psalms. It is named Volume 1 because there are more notes that will become Volume 2 in the future.

 

Some people might like to get a PDF of these to print out or share. So I have made those available. The videos are free and I could not decide on a price for the PDF text items so I offer them at a Pay What You Want basis.

NEXT

I have been struggling with procrastination and perfectionism just to get the first units online.

 

I request your best prayers for the following 3 sets of lessons to be completed soon and get online.

 

Remembering God’s Love

This is 7 short meditations about Holy Communion. In order to recharge our spiritual batteries for better prayer it is important to embrace how much God loves us.

 

Thanking God Often

This is 7 short exhortations to prompt us to be genuinely grateful for the many blessing that God has already provided. The advertising industry wants us to notice that the glass is half empty so that we will strive to fill our cup with their products and services. But if we will just stop and notice that the glass is half full due to the provisions of God, then we will thank Him more often.

 

Knowing Jesus Better

This is 7 lessons about just a few of the wonderful names of Jesus. The effectiveness of prayer does not depend on us but on God. The Bible has granted us ways to know the Son of God based on His revealed names. A little faith in a mighty God can bring amazing answers to prayers.

FUTURE

There are many more lessons in my mind, heart and notes.

 

I must get into the healthy habit of investing top quality time each week in producing and promoting them.

 

This is the core part of my obedience to the revealed will of God during this season of my life.  

 

I am retired and I receive my social security income monthly that covers most but not all my bills. I have incentive to keep moving forward steadily.

 

I admit that I am a workaholic. I live to work. I do not work to live. I have been working on these matters in my new apartment night and day for weeks. Everything else is secondary.

 

Along this path I will need funds to build out a website and subscribe to online services that will help me to gain new email subscribers who will become learners.

 

During this this phase I just create and offer for free lots of lessons that will appeal to those that will want to become learners in an in depth online course. That will dig into the suitable Bible verses and weave in the related biblical theology. It will not be a boring class with too much theory. There will be plenty of practical daily applications.

COMMUNITY

The long term vision is not to just attract lots of learners and say good bye to them after completing an ecourse. Instead there will be an online community. This will be both for those who took the course and those who have not.

 

The online community will be a virtual meeting place for those who are learning to pray better to encourage one another as well as share prayer requests.

 

Surely there will be lots of testimonies of answered prayers coming from that ongoing fellowship.

 

Part of me today is conflicted if it would be best to launch the online community right away or wait until later.

PRAY

Here are my current prayer requests.

 

May God make it clear to me if it is His will for me to launch the online community sooner or later.

 

May God grant me an abundance of high quality time in the creativity zone to make the other 3 sets of 7 lessons.

 

May God guide me to sort through my abundance of notes about online marketing to apply those that will be most effective at this season.

 

May I enroll and work with some beta testers who will provide useful feedback including comments, suggestions and questions.

 

May there be more than enough money to pay my modest bills and to get the needed online tools.

INVITATION

You are invited to go see the initial 7 short videos named Some Prayers and Psalms. Let me know the ones you liked best and why.

 

You are invited to go to the Facebook Group named Let’s Pray Better. Let me know if you had any trouble seeing the videos there. You are invited to share the ones you like most with your contacts.

 

You are invited to go and download the PDF files. Let me know if there were any technical problems.

 

You are invited to reply to this message if you want to become a beta tester of the future lessons. I like to send out the final drafts for comments and edits before I release them to the public.

 

Here are the videos on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9HnXwS06-XwoQWGfdV1EUzFiWUX8Adn8

Here is the Facebook group.

 http://bit.ly/letspraybetter

Here are the PDF files

https://gum.co/SPP-Vol-1

Shalom

Brother John

[Evang. Felecia Spaulding]

AMEN we pray your every need is meet and continuous blessings released to you in Jesus Name.