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Changing Hollywood One Prayer at a Time · iRefresh Podcast

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I have so many stories in Hollywood of Christians who just prayed and through their prayers, they got to touch lives, they got to change sets, and they got to impact production companies.
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They got to watch people's lives just completely transform.
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Welcome to the iRefresh podcast, where every conversation points to the life-changing power of God's living word.
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Let's pursue God together one conversation at a time.
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Welcome to another episode of iRefresh, and I am delighted to introduce you to, I feel like she's my sister from another mother, and that's Karen Covell.
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Welcome.
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Welcome.
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Thank you so much.
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I feel the same.
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Or twins separated at birth, you know.
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There you go.
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I love it.
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It is a joy.
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Whenever I talk about you, I'm like, if you know a little about who I am, Karen is a different version of the same thing.
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We have a passion for prayer.
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Yes.
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Oh, we do.
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And to see the world in a big way where we know it's not about us, it's about us inviting God in.
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I get so excited every time I talk to you, every time I hear what you're doing, your love for women, your passion for gathering people to pray.
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I'm all in, Cheryl.
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You know, Karen, what is so beautiful is when I got involved with Hollywood Prayer Network, which you're the founder of, is I love the connections.
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Matter of fact, you know, being a part of that ministry has allowed me to connect with other people in the industry to pray and encourage them.
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And then to realize, to see how God is doing miracles in their lives.
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And so I would love you to share your heartbeat, like where you are at this point and running such an incredible ministry that has a global impact to touch the lives of the film industry.
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Well, thank you.
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A friend of mine years ago wrote a book called One Big Thing.
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And he says that all of us are on this planet to do at least one big thing for God, to bring down his kingdom, to open him up to other people, to allow people to experience his love and his plan for them.
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And yet we find that in one of two ways, either something we're passionate about, we can't stop talking about, we are driven to be a part of,
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or something that makes us angry.
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Because when we're angry about something, that can lead us to take action.
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Well, I found over 25 years ago that I was leading with my husband a prayer group in Hollywood of Christians in the entertainment industry who would pray together, intercede for the industry, pray for each other's struggles and projects and joys.
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And yet they were all told by their parents, by their families, by their pastors, don't come to Hollywood, that's Satan's pit.
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That's you're going to lose your faith, you're following a selfish career, get a real job.
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I mean, we heard everything.
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And I found out that
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That would only be broken through prayer.
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If we pray for somebody, we can't hate them.
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If we pray for Hollywood, we can't hate it.
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If we pray for that neighbor that's driving us crazy, suddenly we get a different perspective.
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And so I thought, why don't I start a prayer network getting Christians to pray for people, for projects, for the issues in Hollywood, which I see as the world's most influential mission field.
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So I started.
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I take credit, I think, for having the slowest growing ministry on the planet.
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And one person at a time, would you pray for Hollywood?
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Would you pray for the people that are cultural leaders, the people impacting our culture?
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And I, at first, got people saying, pray for Hollywood, please.
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Or, oh, they sure need it.
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There was always an attitude behind it.
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And I just felt driven to keep going.
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Just keep going.
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Prayer is not preparation for the greater work.
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Prayer is the greater work.
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Amen.
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That's been credited to different people.
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I've heard Oswald Chambers, but it's so true.
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So that was my driving force.
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25 years ago, I started the Hollywood Prayer Network.
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It has slowly grown.
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God is changing hearts.
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He's bringing people together.
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So that now we have 170 chapters in 40 countries.
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We have 20 vocational groups of people in Hollywood gathering as Christians in the arts.
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We know of over 10,000 Christians in Hollywood.
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We have a mailing list all around the globe.
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And we still feel like a well-kept secret.
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So we're just gonna keep showing up, keep telling people, just pray.
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We don't want you to do anything else, just pray.
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And because of that, we get to see God moving.
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And so I am completely committed to prayer.
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It's not about us, it's about inviting God in and letting Him do His miraculous work in people's lives.
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You know, that's so important when you just do the first step.
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And your faithfulness, I believe sometimes, yes, we don't always feel like we see the fruit of a lot of labor.
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But I think it's the consistency of going through the yes to God.
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And really, it's the impact of prayer.
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And it's really getting other people to say yes.
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And it's their obedience to God.
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aligning with yours.
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And there's that power of connected agreement and prayer to see the Lord really touch a lot of people's lives.
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You know, I've been okay about not seeing the answers right away.
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That's the hardest thing.
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I think we have to keep showing up.
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We just have to be faithful.
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He asked us to be faithful, not successful or faithful, not productive.
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My husband always teases me and says, God did not say be busy and know that I am God.
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He said, be still and know that I am God.
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Be prayerful.
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Be patient.
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Turn to him.
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Know it's not about us.
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Those are hard things for us as human beings.
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You're so right.
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You know, when you speak about Jim, he's very gifted, a composer of a lot of different works.
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I got the privilege to be in your home, and he showed me his studio and all his amazing music.
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I come from a musical background, and I just totally was so inspired by his gift.
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So I love how you complement each other with your different, the arts and the gifts that each of you have and to affect the kingdom of God in strategic ways.
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Which is, thank you, thank you.
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But that's another thing we realize.
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We marry somebody because we love them.
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But I think God brings two people together in marriage because he has an eternal purpose that only that couple can fulfill.
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And we need to find out what that is.
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So when we were about 10 years into our marriage, we had little kids, we were trying to write a book, we were going in all different directions.
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And we realized, you know what?
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In order to know what to say yes to and what to say no to or what to choose as the best thing to do to spend our time, we need to have a mission statement for our marriage.
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And we prayerfully said, Lord, reveal to us what you have for us so that we have the freedom to do what's best in your eyes.
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And it may be other good things are available, but they're not available.
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what's best and we get to say no freely to things.
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So we found and sought out a mission statement that we realized for the two of us was so unique and so exciting that it would be for the rest of our lives.
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It's not dependent on work.
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It includes work.
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It's not dependent on our children.
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It included our children until they grew up.
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But it continues to be the driving force of why we're together, how we pray together, what we do to show up each day.
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And I think that mission statement came out of our committed prayer.
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We have prayed together every day of our marriage, whether it's on the phone, even by text when we connect with each other, or in person for 42 years.
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And we're committed to know that that's what keeps us going.
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That's powerful.
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I love that.
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We just celebrated 32 years, Tim and I, last week.
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Oh, congratulations.
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But I love that you have a mission statement for your marriage.
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It's really important.
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We found for us, God, why did you bring us together?
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Why are we here in this crazy place?
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And three things became really clear through lots of prayer.
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And that was we together love to challenge Christians outside of Hollywood to not hate it, but to pray for it, to send talented young believers here to be a part of our community and to look at us as an influential mission field, not some horrible business place that that.
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is evil.
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The second thing is we love to build community in Hollywood.
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We both have the gift of hospitality, and we have people over at our house five nights a week, during the week, weekends.
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We have baby showers and wedding showers and community groups and prayer groups and worship nights.
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We also have two bedrooms upstairs since our boys left that we have people stay in all the time.
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We love building community.
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And the third thing is we have a passion to share our faith with the other people in our industry who otherwise may never hear about Jesus.
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And so we have taught a class for 35 years called How to Talk About Jesus Without Freaking Out.
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And we bring in industry professionals, 15 at a time, once or twice a year.
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And for 35 years we've been pouring into people saying, let's just be culturally relevant.
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Let's be so confident in God that we get excited to tell other people about it.
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And so those three things, Jim and I just walk in step with and know that this is our purpose until our last breath.
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That is so amazing.
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And I've watched and I've seen where there were gentlemen that were staying in the upper room.
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Pretty cool.
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So, yeah, Christopher and Cameron, sorry, but you're out.
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You're out.
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Sorry about that.
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We tell them, you better book way ahead if you want to come back.
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That's awesome.
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But I love the continuation.
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In every season of your life, the mission stayed true, and you're constantly showing the love of Christ, and you emulate it through that hospitality of welcoming people into your home nonstop.
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It's beautiful.
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In fact, another thing prayer has brought to Jim's in my mind is the fact that we know people in different cities all over the world where there is some place that Christians have bought property and they open it up to the community.
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In Washington, D.C., there are a couple.
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In Atlanta, in London, in Chicago, Christians who say we're putting stakes in the ground and we are bringing community together, owning property.
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And we realized in Los Angeles, there's nothing like that.
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So we started praying quite a few years ago for the house next door.
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We want to take down the fence.
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We want to open it up to community.
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We want to have people staying.
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We want it to be like La Bride.
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If you're aware, Francis and Edith Schaeffer in Switzerland in the mid-1900s, they brought people from all over the world to just stay, have meals together, pray together.
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And so that's our next prayer.
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We are walking once a week seven times around the two properties saying, Lord, it's got to be a miracle, but we believe you're going to do it.
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And we're just seeing how he can supply for us to expand the understanding of the need for community.
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You know, that's so key.
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When you think about how Christ was telling us how we spread the gospel, yes, we can speak it when we know someone's ready to receive the message directly.
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But sometimes, because of hurt in and out of the church, that they need something where they know that we're authentic, and what we say and how we act, they are the same.
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And I think a lot of us as Christians, we haven't been able to do the two things so much.
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I love how you demonstrate it of showing love, acting it out, and being authentic so that they realize what you're saying and how you live your life, they match.
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It gives them an opportunity to receive Christ.
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Well, it does, and it's such a hard thing.
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And I'm even personally, Jim and I are walking through a season where our youngest son, on fire for Jesus, got very hurt by the church.
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and walked away.
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And we are now praying every day.
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We're not worried, we know he's gonna come back.
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But the path is hard and we realize it's because of Christians not connecting what they say to who they are and what they do.
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And that's where the enemy comes in.
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Oh, does he wanna steal, kill and destroy?
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And the best way to do it is to have one Christian treat another Christian poorly.
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What a perfect plan.
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And we fall for it all the time.
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So I know the only thing that keeps me in line is praying together every day.
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If I don't pray, if I don't see God start the day, end the day, I could be one of those people to hurt someone.
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And maybe I have, and I don't want to, but I need him desperately to keep me in a place where I can show who he is and not try to do what I want to do.
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It's hard.
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You know, it's interesting how you and Jim have been so faithful to create community because it's the very thing that your son's needing.
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He's needing to know that that community where it's love and acceptance of who you are.
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were imperfect.
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And I think I've been judged recently about someone said, well, you just expect everybody to be perfect, and you expect to be perfect.
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And I thought, well, Lord, forgive me if that's what they perceived that I was like.
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There's always grace.
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I know I need it, so I want to extend it to one another.
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And I think that...
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We as believers, the older I get, I'm realizing I need to be, stop if I have a quick judgment and stop and like, Lord, that's my prayer point for someone.
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Is turning it around as an opportunity to pray for Lord, whatever they're walking through.
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I don't know their whole story.
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I don't need to.
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But Father can comfort them, strengthen them, empower them to know your love and your mercies are there for them.
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Oh my gosh, Cheryl, we have so many conversations about that.
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What we have, what we've found for ourselves is if we're not curious, why did that person say that?
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What are they going through?
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What can I do to understand them better and not take things personally?
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If we can just be curious, then we don't become judgmental.
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I think we become judgmental when we decide that's who they are, that's what they've done, how dare they do that to me.
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But if someone says something hard to us or they treat us badly, I want my first response to be, wow, I wonder what they're going through.
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I wonder why they would do that.
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Lord, help me to know, help me understand how I can respond so that they can become free.
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that they can see that what they're doing hurts other people.
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And that it's completely separate from me and more of bringing God down to heal the relationship or to heal the heart of that person.
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And it's only in prayer.
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Everything I keep figuring out, it only comes from prayer.
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Amen.
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Yeah, you know, that's such a powerful message, that by itself, because the enemy uses a division amongst us as believers to divide so, because he knows united God can do mighty things through prayer and that community that we're talking about.
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So it's more mindful for every one of us to be quick to release, to forgive if there's a hurt.
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And trust the Lord, like whatever they're walking through, bless them, encourage them.
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Oh, my gosh.
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If I could, I'll tell you a quick story about how prayer physically changed us, physically changed us.
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When my oldest son, who's now 35 and healthy and amazing and loves Jesus, when he was eight, he got a brain tumor.
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It was the size of an orange in the back of his head and the doctors told us we could lose him.
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It was such a sudden, just horrible experience.
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We called up friends, we told them the situation we were in, we went to the hospital, we had to make decisions about surgery and about what to do.
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The Sunday before the Monday morning surgery.
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It happened to be Super Bowl Sunday.
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I'll never forget this.
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And Jim and I were home.
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My sister was at the hospital with Christopher.
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And we were home.
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We just had to take a shower and kind of pull ourselves together.
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And we were not doing very well.
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We were struggling.
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And I'm in the room.
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And I'm trying to just get myself to go, come on, Lord.
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I've got to believe that we're going to be okay.
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Jim was in the dining room, kind of sitting at the dining room table.
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And suddenly...
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Something lifted and I physically felt like, you know what, regardless of what happens, we're gonna be okay.
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God is faithful.
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He knows what we're going through.
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He's allowing this for some reason.
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Why should I take on the burden of it?
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He knows.
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So I walked out to the kitchen to tell Jim.
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And as I walked in, I just looked up at the clock and it said 11 a.m. And I just remembered that, exactly 11 a.m. And I said, you know what?
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I think we're gonna be okay.
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And he looked at me, he goes, me too.
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I feel like regardless of what happens, our son is God's, our life is his.
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We gotta trust in him and just keep going.
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So we said, okay, let's get ourselves together and go back to the hospital.
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We went back.
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Three days later, after the surgery, where everything went okay, it was miraculous.
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A friend of ours said to us,
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You know, I'm really excited to be a part of the process of what you've gone through.
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And I said, what do you mean?
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He said, Sunday morning, at 11 a.m., 12 of us got together and prayed for Christopher.
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They missed the Super Bowl.
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And they got together and they just prayed for him.
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And 11 o'clock, Jim and I physically changed.
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And at that moment, I said, no one will ever convince me that prayer is not the most powerful thing on the planet.
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Amen.
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You know, it's so beautiful when you realize the goodness of God, that when someone feels an unction to stop and pray, and that they follow through with that, that there's such, like, we're tapping into heaven.
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There's like a portal opens, and the Lord begins to respond to those prayers.
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It's the most, I think if we ever realize that,
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What we are doing when we just speak something out to the Lord, that he truly says he leans down and he listens, and then he responds.
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It's that simple.
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It is, whether we know it or not.
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He responds and he does what's best.
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Jim and I read an amazing book called Imagine Heaven.
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It's about near-death experiences written by a wonderful Christian guy named John Burke.
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And one of the stories is a man who is in the hospital.
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He died.
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He has this near-death experience.
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He's in heaven and he's not really convinced of God.
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When he died, he was not a proclaimed Christian.
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But he's there going, this is all about love.
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This is amazing.
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And then he started seeing what he thought were meteors shooting up, up beside him.
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And he looked, he goes, what is that?
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And he said,
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The person who was talking to him, that I believe was Jesus, said to him, those are the prayers of your family and friends going up right now.
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They're so, they love you so much that those are going right up to God and everyone is being heard and answered.
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And I'm like, whoa, that's amazing.
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Wow.
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It's so incredible.
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And, you know, I think it's interesting, too, of how God is always, even in the little places, you know, both of us, we've been praying for something for a long time.
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You know, for the prodigal, for, you know, the ministries that God's called us into, that we're passionate about.
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And I think sometimes the longer waits are where we need the Lord just to encourage us in the little places.
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Like he's attending to our prayers.
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He's laying the foundations.
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He's opening up the provision ahead for what God called you to do.
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And I think in those moments is like be faithful.
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Continue in his word.
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Continue with what he last told you to do.
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If that's the last thing we do, right, is what's the last thing he told us?
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That's it.
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And obey and follow and be open to his miraculous ways.
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He's the only being able.
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on the planet who turns things into good.
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That's part of his job as God.
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He turns things into good.
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So who are we to decide, oh, that's a curse.
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Oh, that's a blessing.
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We don't know.
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We get to walk with him in this unbelievable adventure.
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And regardless of what it is that's happening, we believe he is turning it into good.
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Amen.
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That's so good.
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Your mission field was very strategic.
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Just like when you think about missionaries in general, they're called to a certain location.
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And I don't know if anybody really fully understands that the Hollywood Prayer Network is the mission field, that you were placed and positioned to be the missionary, to be that love of Christ demonstrated in daily opportunities.
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I mean, the networking that you and your husband both do nonstop.
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Like, you've helped my son as an actor and a producer.
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You've helped connect him to different people.
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I've loved getting to meet different people from the network, you know, from global.
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Like, I've prayed with some of them.
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It's been so fun.
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It's kind of hard when it's in the German time.
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I'm like, okay, wait a minute.
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Last time we did this, like, wait a minute, we had the wrong time zone?
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Oh, wait, this is not Karen's.
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I'm going to have to be up even later to connect with Germany.
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I'm like, it's okay.
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But the point of the prayer and how we are able to see God's hand from different people that you've connected, that is, only God could have allowed this to happen.
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only God and I was convinced years ago that you know I think the only reason why God has this on this planet is for relationship first with him and then with other people and if we understand that the depth, the beauty, the richness of meeting other people, praying with other people, connecting with other people, seeing the world gets bigger and bigger the more people we meet and talk to that strengthens our relationship with God because
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we not only need him desperately but we need his people we can't do it alone and you are incredible how you just lovingly quietly faithfully talk to people who then fall in love with you i can't tell you the number of people in our prayer network they're like cheryl is incredible and it's because you literally care you really want to connect with people and if we could have that attitude and just
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Who should I talk to today, Lord?
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Who should I pray for today?
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Who can you use me to encourage today?
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And I just find that so exciting.
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And to walk with you from two different states in the country, to know our hearts are the same, and then to realize we are forever friends.
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Amen.
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This is it forever.
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We get to keep doing this and never stop.
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And that's why I think Christians feel so connected, is that we know we've got this bond of Jesus that will keep us together forever.
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And again, I go back to prayer.
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When you pray and ask God to use you, he brings you other people along the way.
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Amen.
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You know, that's what I wanted to even highlight here, too, is the avenues in which you've used.
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And one of those, too, is the book that you wrote.
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And I love this because it's the Hollywood Jesus and you.
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And I love how you broke it down.
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And the other part about this.
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I think at one point you gifted me this book, is the connection with the YouVersion app that people could also connect with this devotional.
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Oh, it was the craziest thing.
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A board member of mine was friends with someone at YouVersion.
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And he he said, can I kind of just pitch maybe to get people to be praying for Hollywood?
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And I go, whatever.
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OK, he he talked to his friend and his friend said, we have so many devotionals and none of them tie in Hollywood.
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And so we said, go ahead and do it.
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And so we put it on YouVersion before we ever thought to write the book.
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And like 300,000 people started reading this devotional.
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And so they said, you have to put it in hard copy form.
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So we did that.
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And I'm so excited how the two connect because you can have it tangibly.
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Yes.
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But then you can pull it up digitally as well.
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And I'm really grateful for that.
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And I've done both.
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I've done some of the plans.
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So if you go out to, we'll have it in our show notes, it's going out to YouVersion and downloading the different devotionals that they can walk through.
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That's really good.
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But I also want to let people know how they can connect with you to get their own copy of this.
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And also get more than one copy.
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So when you're walking through it, I would suggest people use this as do it with another friend or even your spouse.
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Oh, I love that.
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And it's based on a week.
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Each week is a different topic.
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jealousy, love, fear, community, any topic for that week.
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And then once or twice that week, a specific prayer on how to pray for Hollywood and tying that into that topic.
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So we have it on our website, hollywoodprayernetwork.org.
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And you can just click on the homepage and it'll, how do we get the resources?
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And it's also listed,
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on our giving page.
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And we love to give that book.
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It's a donation, nonprofit donation to the ministry, and we will send it to you and be so encouraged by it, I hope.
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And we also, you can go to YouVersion, yeah.
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And you can go to Amazon.
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There are different ways to get it that way.
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But we love to hear from people on the website.
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I know people go to that other side, but I would really encourage you.
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I want people to network, get directly in contact with you at Hollywood Prayer Network, because I want you to see all the different avenues of how you can be an ongoing support and praying.
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You know, when we pray, what we've talked about, Karen, is the opportunity that what we can do is connect and to pray along with you.
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Matter of fact, every Friday, my time zone, it's 2 o'clock, but you have an hour of purposeful, strategic ways in which you pray for each other, and then you pray for the different specific things that are going on in Hollywood to make us aware what's happening today.
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Especially a lot of times, a lot of people are needing work and we're lacking it.
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But it's staying in touch with how to purposely know the strategies of the Lord to pray for God to manifest Himself in the lives there.
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Oh, it means so much to have you on that prayer call.
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Every Friday we've done this six years.
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We started with COVID, a good thing that came out of COVID.
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Every Friday for an hour, people from all over the world.
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And we just get to be together.
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I've never felt the community on Zoom as much as I do on this Friday prayer call.
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I just get so excited to see everybody.
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We also have one on one prayer partnerships where if you're a creative person, you can get an intercessor outside of the industry to pray for you as their media missionary.
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If you're an intercessor and you want to pray for somebody in Hollywood or in the global entertainment industry, we match you.
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through our prayer partnerships so that we want every Christian in the arts and entertainment industry to be prayed for by somebody.
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And we need more intercessors.
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We have a lot of people wanting prayer.
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We've gotta find more people that are willing to be prayers.
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We also have a parents prayer team.
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where every week one of our volunteers sends out a whole email list of parents praying for their child or their grown child in the entertainment industry.
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And we pray together for each other as parents lifting up our children.
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And then we have a kids and teen prayer calendar.
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Every month it's updated where kids, youth pastors, families, parents can pray for the people that their kids are watching or listening to on Nickelodeon, on all the kids cartoon networks, on the anything that deals with kids and have them praying.
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So they're not just mass consuming, but they're praying.
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And we have our prayer call sheet.
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Every two weeks, we send out an email how to be praying with inside information about Hollywood, the people, the projects, what's happening here.
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We think everything we can possibly think of to get people praying in any way that they can.
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You know, you're very creative, too, because, like, I do the chapter in the Tulsa area.
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And so there's also different chapters on, like, Facebook communities.
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So you have multiple ways where you're trying to connect small groups, but then the global connection with you directly on the Fridays.
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And then there's the directors also meet once a month.
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online as well and seeing what's going on amongst them.
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So I've talked to people in Australia and several other countries.
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Norway.
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Norway and Ireland.
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Yeah.
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London, it's amazing.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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And it's like you get to have friends from all over.
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And it's such a joy that we can hear what God's doing, encourage them.
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When we had one gentleman out of Florida was praying for the Chosen series and having opportunities.
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So we would just encourage each other.
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Okay, let's pray.
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He's still going out.
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And the Lord's using him just to be present while they're filming.
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I love all that creative way.
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And it really does.
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Yes, and it means something to each other to know that there's someone else on this Zoom who really appreciates what they're doing.
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The gentleman in Texas, he has five prayer groups around the globe praying specifically for the chosen, one in French, one in Spanish, and three in English in different places around the world praying for this.
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And for the other local chapter directors like you to be able to get to know about that, it just expands our territory.
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I agree.
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Now there's also one other thing we're missing is your app.
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Tell us about your app.
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Well, my dear right arm at the Hollywood Prayer Network, Calry, came on five years ago.
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And I had been wanting an app so badly, but it was unbelievably expensive.
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At the time, it was just crazy.
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And she said, Karen, we just need to pray.
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We need to pray to get an app.
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We need an app.
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So we started praying and suddenly, people were willing to come in and help us and the price went down and the scope got bigger.
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And we had,
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I think it's over two years ago now, we got the Hollywood Prayer Network app.
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Anybody across the globe can download it free on any app store.
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It gives all our events.
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It gives all our chapters.
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It gives all our resources, ways to pray, ways to connect.
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And it's been one of my greatest joys because people who reach out to me and say, I found you on an app.
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I'm like, oh, thank you, Lord.
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That's so exciting.
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You know, God has been so faithful with all the works for now 25 years you're celebrating this month.
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It's just amazing how God is continually placing a way for people to connect and learn.
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how they can be a part of praying and then see God's hand move in all individuals, but then things are going on in Hollywood.
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And that's where I love it because film's being done globally.
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And then the people that are involved with that, whether you're personally involved with film or you're just one of those people, like you said, that has a heart for intercession.
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It brings us all together.
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to where we can see God hand move and answer the prayers.
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To see when you put out the prayer requests for specific people, and then the celebrations when we see God moving.
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I love that.
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Oh, I love it.
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I thank you for bringing that up because there's still a lie of the enemy within the Christian world that Hollywood is hopeless, that just write it off.
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It's never going to change.
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And we're seeing as inside prayers
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that God is moving.
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There are things happening.
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Just the merger of faith-based films and secular films, and how now these studios have faith-based divisions, and how Christian production companies are making deals with secular studios.
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There's such a, just a melting together of the Christian world and the secular world here that we keep wanting to tell people, don't lose hope.
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Things are moving.
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God is moving here.
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Amen.
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Yeah, there's so many incredible things that happens, even since I've been involved with your ministry, to see the Lord opening doors, connecting them.
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Part of it is that connection that He's doing, that, you know, you marvel at God, what He does, but He's so faithful to His Word.
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Oh, gosh.
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And very creative, more than we could ever figure out.
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How did that person get with that person, and now they're connected?
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It's crazy, and we just have to show up.
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You know, as we're wrapping up, Karen, I would love for you just to talk to our audience and just share with your heart to encourage them to be faithful in prayer, to hear and obey what He calls you to do, and realize that God hears and He does respond to your prayers.
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Oh my gosh, I have so many stories in Hollywood of Christians who just prayed and through their prayers, they got to touch lives, they got to change sets, and they got to impact production companies, they got to watch people's lives just completely transform.
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And I'll tell you one wild story, a young man and actor,
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got hired to do a job on a vampire show.
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And he was very uncomfortable about being on a vampire show.
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So he called a couple of us and said, would you pray for me?
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I'm not even sure whether I should accept this or not.
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And we said, let's pray.
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And as we were praying, I thought, you know what, Lord?
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He can go somewhere that no other person can go.
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Who's going to get on a set and be able to pray for people and share their faith other than a Christian?
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And so if he says no, maybe he'd be missing an opportunity.
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So I just presented that to him.
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And I said, your role isn't compromising, is it?
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And he goes, no.
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I said, okay, then maybe you can go to a place that no one else can.
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And he's like, oh yeah, maybe so.
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So he got encouraged and another person said kind of the same thing really, and he took the job.
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for some reason the book of Revelation in his ear pods and went on the set listening to the book of Revelation saying I'm gonna fortify myself and I'm gonna go in there and just put the walls up to protect me.
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Well, he's sitting on the set, not interacting with anybody, listening to the book of Revelation.
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When another man walked up to him and said, excuse me.
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And he took out his ear pods and he goes, yeah, he goes,
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this is kind of a weird question, but do you know anything about the book of Revelation?"
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Wow.
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And he looked up and said, I'm listening to it right now.
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Why did you ask me that?
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He said, well, I'm going through a hard time.
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And he goes, somebody said to me that maybe I should listen to the book of Revelation.
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And he said, I was sitting here thinking about it and I looked over and I thought, maybe he knows.
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Well, my friend starts sharing his faith with him.
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This man had gone through this terrible breakup, heartbroken, to the point of almost suicidal.
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They built a relationship, they spent the whole day together.
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That week, he invited this man to come to church with him.
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He came to church with him.
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In like three weeks, he walked up with an altar call and became a Christian.
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And it was all because he just showed up and obeyed God.
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And I see answers to prayer like that almost every week.
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It's crazy what God is doing with prayer.
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We may not see the results immediately.
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We may not feel that God is listening, but we have to have such confidence in him that he gave us this incredible gift to pray.
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We get to tell him everything.
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We get to ask for things beyond what is honestly capable for us to do.
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And then we wait and we trust.
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And we learn that he is faithful.
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And we watch miracle after miracle.
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I've had so many answered prayers now, Cheryl, that Jim and I now every day pray, Lord, we want to either see a miracle today or be a part of a miracle today.
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Because that's how much we see the answers to prayer.
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Yeah, that's such an incredible story.
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It just reminds us that all we have to do is listen to that prompting of what the Holy Spirit is telling us to do.
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And then just walk in it.
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And, you know, I really want to encourage our listeners, too, is be mindful.
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Wherever God calls any one of us to whatever territory, it is for us to take back the territory if it's not his.
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And so it's for us to be present, to pray, to be open to the Holy Spirit's leading us, and to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to show the love.
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You know, it doesn't matter where it's at.
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It's that he guides us in such a way that we are to mark someone else's life if that's what he told us to do.
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And do you know, I'm in an industry where the gods that we worship are literally the Emmy God, the Oscar God, the Grammy God.
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And what I find is those things are so empty.
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When I'm walking through a day...
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and the Lord uses me somehow to touch somebody's life, that's the greatest reward I can ever get.
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Nothing fills me up more than that.
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And we get to tell people that, oh, no, it's not about all the stuff.
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It's not about the rewards, the material things.
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It's about obeying God and watching him use us.
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He doesn't have to, but he chooses us.
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It's crazy and exciting and the best thing in the world.
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I agree.
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And so I just want to encourage those who are listening is to share this podcast so that other people can hear that things are happening.
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People's lives are being saved.
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They're coming back to the Lord.
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They're getting healed emotionally, maybe, and as physically.
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that we are seeing the hands of God constantly doing something on a global influence.
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And I would suggest to you is get connected to Hollywood Prayer Network.
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See how you begin to pray, but also how can you plant a seed into that ministry that will have a continual experience.
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Both my husband and I, we have supported Hollywood Prayer Network together,
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personally because we believe that they are making an impact.
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They are obeying what the Word of God calls us to do, to go into every place.
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And because of that, even iRefresh, we are also supporting their ministry because it's all about prayer and that we align with that.
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And their mission is very much in our heartbeat.
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It's following the voice of God and praying, believing God's going to change the hearts for His good.
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And I want to just jump in and say, your support, your belief in us, your generosity, you don't know how important that is.
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You can feel very alone in this world doing something that sounds crazy.
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And to have someone say, no, I believe in you.
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I'm going to support you.
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I'm going to pray for you.
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Cheryl, I will never, ever be able to express how much that means.
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Well, it's been a joy.
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I mean, there's a mutual benefit we have.
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I love when I've been able to go out there and meet with you and meet people, part of a Highwood Prayer Network, and to hear about the miracles.
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I've literally heard them myself.
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And I just, I know that God's continually doing something.
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And especially with what you're trusting the Lord for the next phase and the next mission that He's calling you into, that we all can have a part in.
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and influence by supporting Hollywood Prayer Network.
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So thank you so much for your obedience all these years to follow after and be faithful to that prayer and connecting so that the Lord can do mighty things.
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Oh, thank you so much.
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And blessings on you as well.
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Let's just keep showing up every day.
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Amen.
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Thank you, Karen.
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If this episode encouraged you, don't let it end here.
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Open your Bible, seek God's heart, and discover the life-changing power of His promises for yourself.
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Until next time, keep pursuing the God who changes everything.