ministry

A Prayer for Sunday Services

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“May God our Father himself and our Master Jesus clear the road to you! And may the Master pour on the love so it fills your lives and splashes over on everyone around you, just as it does from us to you. May you be infused with strength and purity, filled with confidence in the presence of God our Father when our Master Jesus arrives with all his followers” (1 Thes. 3:11-13, The Message).

Lord, I pray for all Your children who will be worshipping You around the world in various places and ways. I pray for all those who will come into Your presence with joy, and also for those come to You with deep grief. I know You meet each and every one of us where we are and at the deepest point of our need.

Help us to seek not what we can get out of the services or come to worship to be spectators seeking to be entertained but how we can outgive and outserve one another as we seek to please and glorify an audience of One.

Lord, I pray that in any case of division or strife within Your body, we will choose instead to leave our offering and go and be reconciled with our brothers and sisters wherever possible first before entering into true worship. I pray You will move to heal broken families and restore broken marriages. I pray You will deliver people from all sorts of addictions and bondages.

Above all, call out people in Your midst to the mission field and to the ministry. Call out those who don’t yet know You in faith to trust You for salvation by calling on Your Son Jesus Christ. May the worship we bring not cease at 11:00 or 12:15 or whatever time the service ends but carry on throughout our day and into the next week. May our worship not just be songs and music but lives surrendered and hearts laid down at Your altar.

Bless and multiply Your Church. Redeem and restore us. Rebuke us wherever necessary. Be mindful of our frailty and fallenness and come among us to make us more like You. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Worry vs. Prayer

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Ann Voskamp said to be a prayer warrior and not a panicked worrier. I think about that a bit lately. One does absolutely no good but only keeps you up at night and keeps you from focusing on what matters. One is the way to the throne of grace where we find help in time of need.

Worry changes nothing. Prayer changes everything.

Worry makes you sick. Literally. Over time, your body will start to manifest symptoms of sickness if you let worry consume you constantly. Prayer on the other hand transforms you. It changes the way you see everything, including your problems.

Worry is a way of looking at the world without God in it. It’s funny how all your anxiety-laden possible outcomes end up with it being completely up to you to fix everything. Prayer shows that not only is God in the picture, but He has already made a way through. He has already overcome. The victory is not only possible but certain.

Worry comes natural. It’s a default setting for every single person born after the Fall. We’re hard-wired to worry and fret and to be anxious over every little thing. But prayer is a discipline that requires work. To get better at praying, you have to pray. You have to learn from others who are older and wiser and who have spent a lifetime learning how to pray. You have to be immersed in the Word of God to know the will of God to pray in the name of Jesus.

But the good news is that you don’t have to be good at praying to pray. You can choose today to pray instead of worrying. Today can be the day that you say to Jesus, “Teach me to pray as you taught the disciples.” And He will do it.

In the words of the great theologian M. C, Hammer, “You got to pray just to make it today.”

Good words.

Continuing to Trust

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I ran across something recently that floored me. It’s one of those Paul Harvey-type of stories that always end with something along the lines of “and now you know the rest of the story.”

The gist is that you can trust God when life doesn’t play out like you thought it would or even how you planned for it to go. You can script your plans down to the nth degree, but still life happens and plans change and you end up in a place you never thought you’d be. What then?

Stay the course and trust God. Or better yet, trust God more than you trust in your plans. God is the only one who never changes. He’s the only one who sits outside of history and knows all of it. He sees the big picture, including how it’s all going to play out. Trust Him.

“A young Dutch apprentice named Wilhelm wanted to become a preacher. In 1879, his zeal brought him to the coal fields of southern Belgium as a missionary. Miners and their families were captivated by the young man’s selflessness. As often happened, there was a mining disaster, and scores were injured. No one fought harder to save the miners than Wilhelm. Afterward, villagers flocked to hear his sermons. When a church official visited the village, they found Wilhelm living in a tiny hut, dressed in tattered clothes. When questioned about what he had done with his salary, Wilhelm said he had given it to the miners and their families. The church official determined Wilhelm had misused the funds and dismissed him from his position. He felt dejected—perhaps even abandoned by God.

Late one afternoon, Wilhelm watched an old miner bending beneath the enormous weight of a full sack of coal. He pulled an old tattered envelope from his pocket and began sketching the figure of the man. Every day, he used his pencil and paper to sketch more of the villagers, whom he had come to love. Through the majesty of his art, he was able to share God with the villagers. Much later, his sketches and other artworks found a wider audience. The young man who wanted to be a minister was Vincent Wilhelm Van Gogh.

Through the circumstances of his life, Van Gogh came to know the sovereignty of God in a very personal way. The Lord’s plan for the young Dutchman was different from what he had anticipated, and it was revealed to him little by little as the minister-turned-artist continued to live out his faith in the Lord. He had not been abandoned, and neither have you. God is near, always loving, always ready to offer His mercy and compassion in your need. Just as He had a plan for Wilhelm, He has a plan for you and for this nation. Continue to trust Him.”

The Perfect Church Service

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Jim Cymbala in his book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire said something that floored me. If you walk away from any church service praising the sermon or the music, then that church has failed. If you’re focusing on the human elements of any worship gathering, the church has not done its job.

Ideally, the response to any worship service isn’t how great we are as a congregation or how great our ministry staff is, but how great is our God. As I read recently, our Sunday meetings can easily slip into Christiak karaoke followed by Ted talks with tithes if we’re not careful.

The key is to allow room for the Holy Spirit to move. Too many churches have programmed their services down to the last second leaving no space for the Holy Spirit to speak to people’s hearts and minds. I for once am not advocating for two hour services, but I do think that sometimes we could be just as attentive to the gentle whisper of the Spirit as we are to the worship schedule.

I also think that we (especialy me) need a shift in our mentality about worship. If our goal is to meet with God, then it shouldn’t matter if the songs were hundred year old hymns or the latest CCLI worship songs. It shouldn’t matter that the pastor made all his points start with the same letter or not.

Our goal is not a great sermon or a deeper worship experience through carefully cultivated worship playlists but to encounter the living and holy God. He’s the true audience of any worship service, not us. Otherwise, it’s just another concert or music event with no more benefit than if we’d stayed home and listened to a Christian Spotify playlist or watched a televised sermon from some famous preacher.

Lord, as we prepare to meet You tomorrow in our places of worship, move in our hearts to yearn for You and You only. Give us eyes to see You and ears to hear from You that You might speak a word to us tomorrow and we could walk away from the gathering different than when we arrived. Speak, Lord, for Your servants are listening. Amen.

The Quiet Miracle

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Today, I was listening to a podcast from Sally Lloyd-Jones, author of the Jesus Storybook Bible. She was conversing with Sir David Suchet, best known for his portrayal of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, about several topics of faith.

One topic of interest to me was when they talked about the miracle at Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine. David noted that one particular thing struck him about the miracle in that Jesus appeared to say or do nothing to bring it about. He didn’t offer a blessing. He didn’t wave His arms or lift up a prayer. He told the servants to fill up the large pitchers with water and when the taster got to them, the water had become wine.

It was a quiet miracle. Michael Card calls it the unmiraculous miracle. It’s notable that presumably no one at the wedding ever found out about the miracle except for the servants who poured the water. Not the wedding hosts or the guests. Not the bride or groom. Only the servants.

Jesus was quietly inaugurating His kingdom and only a few servants were in on it. I’m reminded of how the first people to witness the Incarnation were shepherds who had been out in the fields tending their flocks. The first witnesses of the resurrection were the same women whose testimony would not have counted in a court of law back in that day.

Again and again, Jesus chose the nobodies of the world to be the first to hear His good news. The gospel wasn’t given to the famous or the rich or the powerful at first, but to those discounted and outcast and disregarded by everyone else. But they were the ones Jesus chose.

Isn’t that how it works even now. To those who feel forgotten or left out, Jesus sees you. To those that nobody counts as worth anything, Jesus thought you were worth dying for. To those who sometimes feel like they’re taking up space in the world, Jesus has invited you to be a part of His Great Commission and to be His disciples. Even now, the gospel of Jesus is for you. Even you. Even me.

On the Night Before Palm Sunday

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It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is Palm Sunday, which means a week from tomorrow is Easter Sunday. That will be when people who would normally not go to church will show up feeling uncomfortable and not knowing when to sit, stand, or kneel. Many of them will know very little about why we’re celebrating Easter again this year because mostly what they know is rabbits and candy and hunting for plastic eggs.

Although Christmas is my favorite, Easter is not far behind. It represents why Christmas has meaning. If Jesus died on the cross and remained buried in that tomb, then His birth has no meaning and His life has no value. Anything He said or did would in turn be worthless.

But because there is an empty tomb and a risen Lord, we celebrate. We come together to remember that Jesus laid down His life for us to make our salvation possible. He then rose again to make that salvation secure. We can trust that nothing can separate us from the love of a Savior whom the grave could not hold and death could not defeat.

I do love everything about Easter. I love how people still get dressed up in their best Sunday outfits. I love that little kids still get excited about Easter baskets filled with candy and other goodness as well as hunting for those plastic eggs filled with more candy and sometimes money. I love seeing the world explode in pastel colors as the earth comes back to life after having lain dormant for so long during the winter months.

Palm Sunday represents the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem when the people lauded Him with hosannas. Most of them were thinking He was about to instigate an overthrow of Roman rule and a return of kingship to Israel. They wanted a king just like all the other nations, just like another Saul who looked good and said all the right things.

But a few knew that Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world. They knew that His kingdom wasn’t just for Jews. His kingdom was for anyone who would put their faith in this Messiah. This road that led to a kingdom wasn’t covered with palm branches and hosannas laid down by the multitudes but instead lead to a hill with Him carrying a cross while multitudes jeered at Him and called for His execution. This road would lead to suffering and death, but we know that soon that crown of thorns He bore on the cross would soon be exchanged for a throne that He would never relinquish.

Easter Sunday is a reminder that the worst part isn’t the end. As one writer puts it, your story never ends with ashes. The resurrection means that no one is ever too far gone or too lost to save. It’s never too late to be who God made you to be or to live out His purposes for you.

May our hosannas ring out just as loudly as they did 2000 years ago, but may we also look to the cross and the tomb where Jesus lay for three days and remember that it was for us that He lived and died. But may we never lose sight of that Sunday when He rose again. May our song from now on always be an Easter song because we are an Easter people with a risen Lord!

A Prayer for Sunday

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“Lord, look with great grace, we pray, upon the slaves of sin that are present here this morning; break their chains. Save this people. We know there are some in this congregation who are currently “poisoned by bitterness and bound by wickedness” (Acts 8:23). Move, divine Spirit, over this audience, and fetch out from among us those who do not know God, that they may know themselves and their God this day. Make this to be a profitable, soul-winning Sunday, one of the high days on which heaven’s bells shall ring out more sweetly than ever, because many and many a prodigal child has come back to the Father’s house to make the Father glad.
Amen” (Charles Spurgeon).

I usually try to pray every Sunday for my church. I typically pray that God would make our hearts good soil for God’s word to go deep and produce a harvest. I also pray that if there’s anyone sitting in the rows during the service that doesn’t have a saving faith in Jesus that they would come to know Jesus as Savior and Lord.

I’m not typing all that to humble brag. I’m simply being obedient. Who knows? Maybe God would have saved someone anyway, but I know the Bible says that we have not because we ask not (to put it in super King James English).

Are you praying for your church? Are you praying for God to move in your services? With all the talent in most churches, it can be so easy to preplan and program every service down to the second and leave no room for the Holy Spirit to move. We can run an entire Sunday off of our own agendas and abilities and charisma and not even be aware that God was not present because we never invited Him in.

It’s always a good idea to pray for lost people to come to Christ in your church services. It’s never wrong to pray for reconciliation of families and marriages, for the calling of people to the ministry and missions, for God to bring revival to your church, your city, and the world.

Lord, move in every place where we assemble to worship. Don’t let us get by on our strength alone but bring us to the place where we’re dependent on You for anything good that happens this Sunday. Speak, Lord, for Your servants are listening.

Be Generous

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“Everything in the world is about to be wrapped up, so take nothing for granted. Stay wide-awake in prayer. Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless—cheerfully. Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything—encores to the end of time. Oh, yes!” (1 Peter 4:7-11)

That’s the key: generosity. Not everyone is in a position to be financially generous, but there are other ways. You can be generous with your time. You can be generous with your talents. Best of all, you can be generous in your commitment to pray for someone or something. And in my book, prayer is the most powerful weapon we have in the fight against the adversary known as satan and the systems of this world.

It boils down to loving others like Christ loved us. He loved us not in word only but in deed. His love took up a wooden cross and bore the nails and died for you and me. Our love should be just as tangible toward those in need, especially during this time of the year with Thanksgiving and Christmas approaching.

Lord, help us to be as generous to others as You have been to us. May our love show itself not merely in words but in actions that meet the needs of those around us. May we remember that whatever we do in serving the least of these brothers and sisters, we are really serving You. Amen.

Room in the Inn

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I realized today that I have been serving in the Room in the Inn ministry at Brentwood Baptist Church for 15 years. I saw the post where a friend invited me to join him and a few others on Monday nights to help minister to the homeless men who need a place to stay on those cold winter nights.

It’s been a blessing from day one. I know that I originally went in with the mindset of being a blessing to those men but more often than not they have been the ones to bless me with their resilient faith and tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds.

These days, a typical Room in the Inn Monday night looks like welcoming 24 men into our church building. We line up in the hallway and clap and cheer as they come in from the bus. They’re not just visitors. They are guests and we want them to feel like rock stars — we want them to know that they are wanted and loved.

Then we serve them a warm meal and sit with them and talk with them. Hopefully, we find out some of their stories. Many are open and willing to share their journey with us. We also have a place for them to write out their prayer requests that we will then faithfully pray over in the days and weeks to come.

The highlight of the evening for me is when we offer a Bible study. It’s completely optional. We don’t force them to come but we try to encourage them as much as possible to attend. I’ve been blessed to be able to lead some of these Bible studies along with a few others.

For those who are looking for a low-risk high reward way to serve, Room in the Inn meets at the Wilson Hall entrance to Brentwood Baptist Church on Mondays starting at 5:30 pm. It’s completely self-funded and is one of many locations through Room in the Inn that offer a place for people to stay out of the elements and weather for the night.

I always remember the words of Jesus when He said that whatever you did to the least of these, you did it for Him. Mother Teresa called those in poverty and homelessness Jesus in His most distressing disguise. I know that to share the love of Christ is our main goal and focus from now until the end of the season at the end of March.

A Prayer for Sunday Worship

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“Oh Lord God, we earnestly seek your help in truly worshiping you. We thank you for this occasion and bless your name for setting apart this sacred season. Lord, would you please shut the door on the distractions of the world for us? Help us forget our worries and concerns. Enable us to rise above the worldly tendencies that weigh us down. May the allure of earthly things fade away, and may you draw us close to yourself. Amen” (Charles Spurgeon).

Lord, help us to enter into Your gates with thanksgiving and into Your courts with praise. May we worship You in spirit and in truth and not just in singing and lifting hands. May our entire lives become offerings of worship as You commanded in Romans 12:2.

We enter Your presence with a myriad of distractions and a multitude of things coming at us from all sides. We who are programmed into anxiety by every other voice in our heads seek after Your peace that will calm our fears and give rest to our souls.

Help us not to be conformed any longer to the thought patterns and ways of the world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds through the reading and hearing of Your Word. Help us not only to retain new information but to put it into practice by obeying what we hear. May we truly be doers of Your Word and not hearers only.

Help us to be mindful of those who are struggling or hurting within our midst. Help us to see them through Your eyes of compassion and to invite them into the circle of our fellowship. May we be Your hands and feet to them just as others have been Your hands and feet to us in our time of need.

Above all, help us to remember that Your Church is not a location or a building but a community of flesh and blood believers gathered together for a unified purpose. Remind us that as we exit through the sanctuary doors that we are still as much the Church as we were inside. May we bear in mind that as we drive off the parking lot of the church building, we are truly entering the mission field where the harvest is ripe and ready but the workers are few. Make us Your workers tomorrow and every day. Amen.