Prayer Breakfast Offers Encouragement and Hope

Dallas–The Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) Airport Interfaith Chaplaincy hosted its annual RISE UP Prayer Breakfast virtually on Friday, Aug. 28.

“The mission of the DFW Airport Interfaith Chaplaincy is to provide the ministry of presence, spiritual counseling and personal support to the DFW Airport community at large by providing places of worship and reflection for people of all faiths and religious traditions,” Father Greg McBrayer, chairman of DFW Airport Chaplaincy, said. “Our purpose in being here this morning is to build community, provide encouragement and to raise funds to keep our mission moving forward.”

Dr. Tony Evans served as this year’s guest speaker.

“People are looking for a place of light,” Evans said. “That’s what you offer in your ministry. You offer light to the travelers, who are traveling in the midst of darkness in the world. You offer, as I pass by in my many travels at DFW, and I pass by the Chaplaincy area, I know there is a place I can go into where people can be, if needed, talked to, to give me light in a dark situation. That’s why I love Jeremiah 29:11. ‘I have a plan for you, said the Lord, a plan for your well-being, not your calamity, to give you a future and to give you a hope.”

“Hope is future-oriented. Hope is looking at where you’re going and not at where you’ve been or where you are. Hope is saying, ‘My tomorrow is going to be better than my yesterday.’ That’s what people are needing today. They’re needing a lit location, which is what [the Chaplaincy] provides to help them see beyond this circumstance, their pain, their isolation, their fear and their struggle.

“We’re living in a hopelessness culture. You’re seeing it with the increase of suicides, the increase in abuse,” Evans said. “You’re seeing it in the increase of depression and anxiety. All of those are symptoms of hopelessness.

“What the Chaplaincy does is it points people back to God. It gives people a Divine perspective in an historical reality.

“Salvation is free, but ministry can be costly, because it takes the support of people to make it work,” Evans said.

“We were very pleased with our first virtual prayer breakfast event,” McBrayer said. “We actually debated on even having the event on a virtual platform, having never done it before. We had very good attendance, and we were overwhelmed by the positive responses to the presentation and encouraging message that Pastor Evans delivered, which we all so desperately needed to hear in these trying days.”