Monthly Archives: October 2014

5 Prayers for an Outreach Event

Posted on by under Theology
Credit: Praying Man by Vittore Carpaccio (1466-1525), Wikipedia

Credit: Praying Man by Vittore Carpaccio (1466-1525), Wikipedia

If you are unable to attend your church’s outreach event, you still have a critical role to play, namely to pray. Outreach events are often a lot of ‘doing’ and the ‘praying’ part can be forgotten. Below is a simple guide for the hard work of praying for an outreach event.

  1. Pray for Clarity. In most outreach events, there are opportunities to be a good neighbour, but it can be easy to pass up on being clear about the gospel.  Pray that every opportunity to speak the gospel will be met with a clear, concise, winsome statement of the gospel of Christ.
  2. Pray for Soil. Jesus told the parable of the sower (Matthew 13) and distinguished different kinds of soil. There is really only two kinds, the kind that bears lasting fruit and the kind that doesn’t. We need to pray for the supernatural work of God to prepare ‘spiritual soil’ that will respond to the gospel seed sown.
  3. Pray for Harvesters. Jesus announced that the harvest was ripe and ready. The only issue was the need for harvesters (Matthew 9.37-38). Jesus said that disciples need to pray that more workers would be sent by God into the harvest. This shows the invaluable role that prayer has in God’s purposes. This command from Jesus should be obeyed leading into outreach opportunities as we pray that workers would be sent into the harvest.
  4. Pray for Unity. Jesus explicitly stated that the unity of his disciples would provide the warrant for others to know to whom they belonged. This unity is expressed in love for one another. At an event that requires organization among sinners, there will always be rough edges between people. Therefore we must pray for the unity that love for one another produces. Love is effective in this because love “covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4.8), and “bears all things” (1Cor 13.7)
  5. Pray for Compassion. Consider the compassion of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel (9.36, 14.14, 20.34). It is easy to mistakenly think of people as ‘projects’ and the goal of an outreach as letting people know how smart you are. But we need to pray to see others with the compassion that Jesus had for lost sinners. Prayer overcomes our tendencies to turn outreach into self-promotion. Prayer also reminds us most of all of Jesus’ compassion toward us—- sinners whose only boast is the mercy of the Saviour.

Remembered Revelation is the Root of Prayer

Posted on by under Soul
Credit: Betende Hände by Albrecht Durer, 1508, Wikipedia

Credit: Betende Hände by Albrecht Durer, 1508, Wikipedia

Prayer is an active memory recital toward the living God. In prayer, we remember both needy people and God’s revealed promises. We boldly request that God would act for the people in accord with the promises.

Paul focuses on memory in prayer in Romans 1.9. When Paul said he prays, “without ceasing I mention you”, the word “mention” is the Greek word is mneian. It is a word for ‘remembering’. It is also in the first chapter of most of his letters (Phil 1.3, Eph 1.16, 1 Thess 1.2, Philemon 1.4, 2 Tim 1.3). If we want to pray like Paul, we need to have the same focus. We need to remember.

Why is this important? Why is ‘memory’ and our prayerful ‘mentioning as remembering’ important? Because it keeps our prayers from being merely speculations. We are not imagining whatever we want. We are not ‘dreaming’. We are remembering and reciting.

There are two aspects to prayer where our remembering comes in:

Remembering God’s Word. This means that the Scriptures, and God’s revealed will in the Bible is what should shape our prayers.

Remembering Others. This means that we actively recall people and situations.  We remember people who are close to us and those far away. We remember them: from missionaries to mother-in-laws.

This is not “listening prayer” as certain modern supposedly evangelical mystics say. We are not imaginatively speculating about what God would say to us, and acting like God actually said what we have speculated.  This is extremely dangerous, but it is becoming a more mainstream practice among evangelicals.

Rather prayer is remembering what has already been revealed and requesting the living God to act based upon that prior revelation.  Remembered Revelation is the Root of Prayer.

Bitter Preachers?

Posted on by under Preaching

Of this bitterness in preaching, … so sensible was he of its being quite natural to all of us, that oftentimes he made it the subject of conversation, and used to grieve over himself if he had spoken with anything less than solemn compassion.

Andrew Bonar’s recollection of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, (Memoirs and Remains of RM M’Cheyne, 53).