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Happy fall, happy Thanksgiving, and all that other good stuff. What a magnificent time of the year. We have some excitement for you, too, in our November letter below...
We've been extremely pleased with the response to our new prayer initiative, HOPE Heals. (HOPE is an acronym that stands for Houses of Prayer Everywhere and we believe God would be honored if every Seventh-day Adventist church in our Division were known as such in its community.) If you haven't done so already please go to our brand new website: www.HOPE-Heals.org. (Note the hyphen.) You'll find a ton of resources with more arriving every few days.
Let me give you a little taste:
Intercession That Changes Eternity
Does your church pray? I don't mean a polite "invocation" at the beginning of the service, but does your church corporately participate in intense, eternity-changing intercession when it gathers?
What is an "invocation" anyway? We say that it is when we invoke, or invite God to enter our worship service. Really? We're inviting Him to His house? What kind of double-speak is that? It's His day, and He invites His people to worship in His house. "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together," He urges through the apostle Paul.
A more appropriate request then might be that He would make us attentive so we can hear His voice. We might ask Him to, as the song says, "Tune our hearts to sing Thy praise," that He will help us make the songs we sing true worship gifts to Him. We entreat Him to shut out the distractions and draw us into His presence. We ask that He will lay on our hearts the same burdens that are on His. Repentance and praise must be consistent ingredients, too.
While it's true that, "Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend," that doesn't mean that it is casual or impromptu or shallow. We would not come to speak to the people for God without preparation; neither should we come to speak to God for the people without preparation. If it's true, as Jesus said, that His house should be a house of prayer, then there is no more important part of the worship than praying, and no more important preparation than preparing to pray.
We were in a service recently when the worship leader drew us up short with a simple question: Does our church spend more time in the announcements or in praying? Now I'm not suggesting that we worship with a stopwatch, but I am suggesting that we take seriously the managing of spiritual priorities.
If our meetings are bland and predictable, if miracles are few, if our emphasis is on raising the church budget rather than on raising the dead, maybe...maybe it's because we are seeing prayer as supplemental rather than fundamental, as a casual saying of grace at the beginning of the meal rather than as the joyous savoring of the meal itself.
It's something to pray about, isn't it?
There are some BLOGs like this on the
www.Hope-Heals.org website already and there will be a new one each week.
Warning: the following story may increase your heart rate...
Josh Voight, a pastor in the Baltimore, MD, area, was one of our prayer team who prayed for the NAD Yearend meetings that just finished last week. The group came together every morning at 7:15 in the NAD Chapel to pray for the day's deliberations and to ask for the special guidance of the Holy Spirit.I can tell you it was a precious time.
But the story I really want to tell you is about how Pastor Josh normally starts his day. Early each morning - early as in 5:00 - Josh slips out of bed and goes to his study. After half an hour of personal worship, he picks up his cell phone and his Bible and has church. Using an app called Periscope he connects with his "congregation" - primarily millennials - all over Europe and the Middle East. Although it's early in Baltimore, it's midday where his "members" are. There may be as many as 250. Christians, non-Christians, former Christians, Muslims., Hindus.. they come on and listen to his simple Bible study. He reads a verse, maybe tells a story, then he prays. And they respond. They talk back. They ask questions. They share their hunger for God. They ask him how to become a believer, they tell him of their needs so he prays. What a thrill it's going to be when someone approaches him on the streets of glory one day and says, "Thank you. I first heard His story from your telephone."
I asked Josh how he got started. He said, "You know, the hunger for God is everywhere - and growing. For some on the call their motive may be primarily to learn English - and that's ok. But for the majority, they have a deep hunger to know God and they are finding it in this simple introduction to His Word. It's one of the most rewarding things I do."
Reminds me of a statement I read a long time ago, "All around us are people longing for the kingdom, waiting only to be gathered in." Lord, stoke our desire to reach them by whatever means we can. Amen.
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Josh Voigt, pastor of the Chesapeake Conference's Middletown and Catoctin View churches in western Maryland, wakes at 5 a.m. for morning devotions when the house is quiet and his wife and three little boys are usually still sleeping..
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Getting Personal With God:
We're only about six weeks away from the North American Division Day of Prayer, January 2. As always we will provide a special speaker, a sermon for that Sabbath morning, to be aired on HOPE Church Channel - at 11 AM Eastern and again at 11 AM Pacific time. You may want to plan now to use it for your church service, or to record it for future use.
Our speaker this year is Pavel Goia and his sermon is titled, "Getting Personal With God." It will help provide a strong beginning for the year in your church and/or your home. You probably know Pavel and have heard him speak. If so you'll understand how pleased we are to have this powerful message to share all across our Division this year. It's not too early to begin planning to make the first weekend of the New Year a deeply spiritual time in your church.
Blessings and Happy Thanksgiving,
Ruthie
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Ruthie Jacobsen
NAD Prayer Coordinator
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This Month's Zinger
If our meetings are bland and predictable, if miracles are few, if our emphasis is on raising church expense rather than on raising the dead, maybe...maybe it's because we are seeing prayer as supplemental rather than central, as a casual saying of grace at the beginning of the meal rather than as the joyous savoring of the meal itself.
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All Night Call to Prayer
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Phone: 404-891-6338
ID 772 937#
Our next all-night call will be
December 3.
10:00 p.m. - 5:00 a.m. (EST)
Mark that date on your calendar.
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Praying for the people we love who have quit coming to church
by Nancy Canwell
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ALMOST A DISASTER
"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience" (Colossians 3:12, NIV).
When Diego left home as a teenager in search of a more exciting life, he also left the church. It wasn't until years later, after he was married and had a family, that he decided to give church another try.
He chose to visit the smaller of two Adventist churches in his town. Wanting to meet the pastor, he called the church to let him know that he and his family would be visiting that Sabbath.
"It was almost a disaster," Diego told me. "My family and I walked in and sat down near the back of the sanctuary. No one spoke to us-but they did spend a lot of time looking us over. I looked at the bulletin in horror to realize that it was Communion Sabbath. I remembered communion as a kid, but my wife and children had absolutely no religious background. What were they going to think of this odd service? I felt awkward and uncomfortable.
"When the congregation got up to leave for the traditional foot washing, we stayed in the sanctuary. The pastor gave us a wave from across the room, but that was the only contact he made with us that day.
"After church my family and I got up and walked through the foyer and out the door. Once again, no one spoke to us. I was devastated! This was not what I had imagined. I'd been reading the book of Acts and expected to experience a vibrant, loving, fellowship of believers. It was very discouraging. As I walked away, I wondered if I really wanted anything to do with 'church' again.
"That's when the almost-disaster turned into what I call a miracle. Two elderly ladies came running down the sidewalk toward us, frantically waving their hands in the air. Even though we were leaving, they welcomed us to church and invited us to come back the following week. I call what they did a miracle because had it not been for them and their kindness, I may have made that my last attempt at church. Instead, even though we didn't return to that particular church, we tried the other Adventist church in town and liked it so much that we became members."
The boldness of those two elderly women made all the difference. They weren't evangelists, pastors, theologians, or even local elders. But they simply cared enough to reach out. And that made all the difference.
Prayer Focus: Pray that should a disconnected one return, we will welcome him or her home the way the father did the prodigal son: with unbelievable love, acceptance, forgiveness, and celebration!
Recommended Resource:
Involve: Understanding Natural Evangelism, by Larry Brown. Order from
AdventSource.
* Names have been changed
______________________
Nancy Canwell
If
you have missed any of the previous articles of the Reconnecting Ministries Series you may find them all here:
Click Here
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Prayer Conference Videos
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Pray For Our Conferences and Their Leaders By Name
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PRAY ONE MILLION
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Calendar
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All Night Call to Prayer - December 3
Curriculum Focus for the Month: Prayer - November
NAD Day of Pryaer - January 3
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