A follow up to yesterday's post

I totally agree with the quote I posted yesterday. Our prayers should be gritty and personal and specific. My question, as usual, has to do with the employment of this practice in our everyday lives. 

I can pray with pinpoint precision about my needs because I know them. But, how am I to pray for my brothers and sisters if I don't spend time talking with them about the personal and the gritty? I have to know the gritty needs of others before I can pray specifically for them. 

And that leads to this question: How do you get down to the gritty and personal with a people who are uncomfortable with personal? Everyone I know has "trust issues." 

What can we do to become a church that shares the personal and gritty (what I think a church was intended to be)? 

Praying with Purpose

Check out this quote from Pray Big: The Power of Pinpoint Prayers by Will Davis: 

• Have you ever listened to how we pray? It’s like Christians have developed their own prayer language, and I don’t mean the ecstatic kind. Lord, please bless Bill.What exactly do we mean by that? Do we want God to make Bill more holy or more disciplined? Are we hoping that his business will prosper or that he’ll be a better husband? And why do we ask for blessing when Ephesians 1:3 says that we are already blessed with every spiritual blessing that God can give? God, please be with Joan. God’s already with Joan. His Spirit lives in her, and he promised to never leave for forsake her. What do we really want God to do for Joan? Father, we pray that you give Jack a special anointing. As if there is such a thing as an ordinary anointing. Special anointing is redundant. And, God, we ask that you give Sue and extra helping of your grace. What is that? Does God dole out grace in measured proportions? That prayer makes God seem as if he has a big serving spoon - that he can be either generous or stingy with the helpings of grace he dispenses.
• God wants us to be strategic and focused about what we’re asking him to do. We need to pray for things - very specific things, gritty things, personal things, important things, kingdom things - with the pinpoint precision that Jesus modeled in the Lord’s Prayer.

What should we be specifically praying for this week? 

Posted by Jessica Page

Conflict: Satan's Warning Signal

"Change is the seedbed for conflict"
These are wise words that we should remember. Conflict is not always a bad thing. It causes us to either change for the better or become reassured in what we are doing. Many times change occurs because someone's territory is being threatened. We can all say that we understand that Satan has had territory in our church. It has rocked along for a while with very little growth causing us to become very introverted. The Great Commission is extroverted.
Let us be encouraged that conflict has begun. Without it we could wonder hopelessly at whether or not we are finally taking back God's territory. We know for sure now. We are as the Israelites slowly taking the Promised Land. They fought people after people and even fought amongst themselves. You cannot take territory with a passion that is God ordained without conflict.
Praise God for the proof.
Conflict is Satan's warning signal. He is telling us, "You'd better stay back. You're on my land and I've got a gun". Forget him. He stinks!

IF THIS BE OF GOD

In Acts 5:33-42, the Jews were trying to stop the growth of the New Testament Church. A wise man from the enemies side said this, "Other men have risen up and started revolutions and failed. Leave these men alone, because if what they are doing is of GOD, you cannot overthrow it anyway."

Many allow themselves to become naysayers in the face of growth AND EXCITEMENT. Let them talk to themselves. If this be of God, they have no power over it. If God be for us who can be against us?

I Can Smell It

“God is changing the church, and that, in turn, will change the world. Millions of Christians around the world are aware of an imminent reformation of global proportions. They are saying in effect: ‘Church as we know it is preventing church as God wants it.’ Amazingly, many are hearing God say the same thing to them.” --Wolfgang Simson (Houses That Change the World).

Something at this church is about to explode. I can smell it. And, I am excited about it! Church, as we know it, is about to change.

Maybe Not Asia

Paul was on a roll. He was leading people to Christ and starting churches left and right. It only made sense to keep going a certain direction and go into Asia. On his way, the angel of the Lord withstood him. He did not allow him to go the way he wanted or the way that made the most sense. Instead, God needed him to go to Macedonia.

Sometimes, common sense is not God sense. What are some times in your life when you had to choose between Common Sense and God Sense?

New Mercies

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning." -Lamentations 3:22-23

How have His mercies been new to you today or this week?