Abraham had an intercessory conversation with God about sparing the lives of the righteous people in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and his prayer was answered, but not necessarily in the way he thought it would be answered. The Bible has much to say about the kind of prayer that gets results.

Everyone wants their life to count for something. Everyone wants to be great in one way or another. The problem is that the world's path to greatness is very different from God's path to greatness.

Abraham had a day with some great news and some bad news. The good news was that God reaffirmed His promise that Sarah would have a child within a year. The bad news was that Sodom and Gomorrah would be destroyed for their wickedness.

The world in which we live is broken. Everyone knows it. Everyone has different ideas about how to fix it. Some turn to political involvement. Some turn to environmental causes. Some simply give up and try to get as much out of this life as they can get before it all comes crashing down. There is hope for this world and His name is Jesus.

Abram went 13 years without hearing from God after the fiasco that led to the birth of Ishmael. When God spoke, however, it was to remind him that He had been working all along, and His plan would be fulfilled.

Life is hard. Sometimes life is so hard that even as a follower of Jesus, we feel like giving up. Hebrews 12:1-3 gives us encouragement to persevere even in the toughest times of life because we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who are cheering us on and we're following Jesus, who's been through it all before.