Feb 07, 2011 Let us Pray
Originally posted on October 30, 2003
To ground our praying in God’s word and to give us confidence and purpose in our praying, we considered Ephesians 3:20-21. These verses come at the end of a longer prayer. In the prayer, the Apostle Paul prayed that the people he wrote to would know the greatness of God’s love for them. In a combination of theology and doxology, Paul closed the prayer with, “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.”
God is able and to Him belongs glory.
God’s ability is to do more than we ask or think and to do through us by His power.
God’s glory is in the church that prays and has Christ, the Head, working through it.
So what do we do? We pray persistently and we walk obediently. The combination of praying, obeying, risking and believing are powerful. When a church lives this way, God does far more than it can imagine and He does it through that church.
When I read these verses, I say in prayer, “to Him be the glory of Grace Community Church.” May it be so!
You can obey by committing yourself to pray. Here is how you can pray.
1. Church leaders: holiness, love, purity, wisdom, discernment, sacrifice, decisiveness, teaching, shepherding, leading, repentance, faith, renewal, strength.
2. Church: renewal, love, unity, repentance, faith, hunger for God, outreach, compassion, sacrifice, discipleship, service, energy.
3. Lost people: openness, responsiveness, conviction, awareness of need, hearing, thinking, repentance, faith, discipleship.
4. A place: a worshipping, equipping, sending center.
5. Provision: people; finances & energy; for finding, purchasing & building a worshipping, equipping & sending center.
6. Clarity: elders, congregation, clarity of direction, unity in decisions, common purpose and vision.
7. The manifest glory of God among us.
Scott Patty, Pastor