A few weeks ago, I preached a sermon on Biblical Community, which is part of our vision pathway. In this sermon, on Acts 2:42-47, I shared a quote about prayer. Charles Spurgeon said, “The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if He be not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be a slothfulness in prayer!”
We can have a great mission statement, and we can have excellent music. We can have great children’s programming and wonderful special events like the Tree. However, if we aren’t bathing it all in prayer, we are completely missing the point. We want to seek God’s heart in prayer and be willing to submit completely to His will for our church.
That is one reason why I am excited that we are going to be walking through the book of Nehemiah this spring. We are calling the series “The God Who Builds,” because we know that unless the Lord builds the house, we will labor in vain. In this book, Nehemiah is focused on rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and renewing the covenant between God and His people. However, there is a common theme that runs throughout the book: Nehemiah is a prayer warrior! He is constantly seeking the Lord in prayer and submitting himself completely to God. I pray that as we walk through this book together, the importance of prayer will continually be brought to our minds.
One other thing I wanted to bring to your attention is our Mid-Winter Bible Study. We are privileged to have Dr. Jason Duesing, the Provost at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, coming down to lead this study. He is going to be challenging our church on how we can “Love God.” He will be preaching three different messages on this topic. I want to encourage you to come to both services that Sunday (8:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.), and then stick around after for lunch in the dining room. After lunch, Dr. Duesing will finish with one final message. Dr. Duesing was one of my professors during my time at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and I know you will be blessed by him!
Please join me in praying for our church, our study through Nehemiah this spring, and our Mid-Winter Bible Study. I am believing that God is going to be working in a big way in 2020. We need to simply get on our knees and submit to His will!
In Him,
Pastor Zach