Father, there are many believers in Jesus Christ throughout our land who love You, love Your Word, love their brothers and sisters in Christ, love ministering to others in need, and love sharing the gospel with their neighbors who are searching for hope. However, these same believers, such as myself, are aging. One day we will no longer be able to serve You as our strength withers, and eventually, we pass on to glory.
Who will take up the baton and do the work we were doing? The younger generation. Father, my prayer this hour is that You raise up a generation of young men and women who desire to give You honor and glory by serving the advancement of Your Kingdom. I pray that You give them courageous and authentic faith, a faith that longs to walk before You in righteousness, and a faith that is not afraid of sharing the hope of Jesus Christ with a deeply hurting world.
Father, I ask that You use Gramazin to inspire young people to enthusiastically volunteer to serve You. I know, Father, that Gramazin, and especially 72Stories, do not have the exciting gaming functions, including state-of-the-arts graphics and sound, that engage young people for hours. There are no weapons to carry across an endless virtual landscape and there is no one to shoot. We leave up to the imagination what our characters look like.
However, our 72Stories application has been designed to simulate real-life ministry. A “player” needs to overcome the challenges of finding people in a fictitious town with over 260 locations, introducing themselves to any of the over 3,000 characters, getting to know the details of their messy and broken lives, doing and saying the right things to build trusting relationships, and then leading the characters to the gospel. They must maintain and replenish their ministry strength. They must use the power of simulated prayer to make things happen. They must overcome setbacks such as character’s becoming offended by other “players”, character’s succumbing to temptation, and character’s suddenly dying.
Father, ministry teams from homeschool associations, Christian schools, high school youth groups, Christian colleges, faith-based ministries in secular colleges and universities, and students from seminaries can learn about the challenges and joys of ministering to broken and hurting people as they have a good time bringing the gospel to West Hunter USA.
Leaders, teachers, and professors can use our books, Take Every Passage to Prayer and Take Every Thought to Prayer, which are available in the same space, can broaden the discussion about ministry with students by incorporating passages of scripture and thoughts on hundreds of human experiences.
Father, I ask that You lead leaders from schools and associations to contact us to discuss how Gramazin can be a valuable asset to their curriculums and to their student’s campus experiences. Amen.
What kind of believer is enthusiastic about local missions? It is a believer who has confessed their rebellion from God. It is a believer who has placed their faith in Christ alone for salvation. It is a believer who lives a repentant life in full surrender to the authority of God's Word. It is a believer who loves God so much that they love the people He loves - their neighbors in need. Our book, Take Every Passage to Prayer, Volume 2 - The Gospels, affords teams of students private online spaces to brainstorm together how their faith can grow to the point that they want to take action to love their neighbors in need.
How can believers make sense of human suffering? How can believers minister to people diagnosed with cancer? How can believers minister to families going through divorce? How can believers minister to people who are estranged from their children? Student teams can chat about each one of the 700+ prayers about the human experience in our two volume book Take Every Thought to Prayer. The result of such discussions will be strategies your students create to address the various hurts and disappointments their neighbors are facing.
Testimony sharing is essential to local outreach. "What did Jesus do for you?" "Why are you being so kind?" "Do you really believe in this stuff about Jesus?" Sadly, many believers in our congregations are terrified about sharing their testimonies with others. While we don't profess to have all the answers for how believers can gain confidence in writing and sharing their testimony, we have enough passion for testimony sharing to have prepared 72 recordings on the topic. Your student teams can listen and then chat about each recording, encouraging each other to share their testimonies with their hurting neighbors.
"My heart is right for ministry. I have an idea how to minister to people who may be suffering with any number of adversities. I've even prepared my testimony. However, I really don't know how to walk into my community, meet people, build relationships with them, and touch their lives for Christ. What's that look like? What if I make a mistake? What if people are nasty to me? How do I respond to them?" Student teams can step into our ficticious communities and make mistakes in ministry with our fictitious characters. Your students can then talk about how to avoid those mistakes in real life ministry.
"Good morning, class! Over the next 12 weeks, we are going to prepare our hearts and minds for local ministry. Our class will be using Gramazin.com as our private online space to brainstorm how to be effective in local outreach.