Have you ever had God wake you up early in the morning? I had that experience on Wednesday. I woke up a little after 3:00 a.m. Try as I might, I couldn’t fall back asleep. So around 3:45 a.m. I got up. I did my morning devotions and worked on my sermon a bit. Then I just spent some time listening to God. I’ll be honest, I don’t do that as often as I should. But that morning I had a sense that God had something he wanted me to hear.
Rock Church has had an amazing summer and early fall. We had 15 baptism a couple of weeks ago. Our new NextGen program is off to a great start. We are seeing guests in worship every week. But I still have the sense that there’s something more God wants for us. Something deeper. In my early morning conversation with Him, I felt God calling us, all of us at Rock church, to a season of prayer. I know that many of us pray at home, in our personal time and with our families. But more specifically, I believe God is calling us to spend time in prayer together on Sundays.
In light of that calling, I want to invite us to gather in our respective worship spaces this Sunday, perhaps just 10 to 15 minutes before the service begins, and just pray. Pray for our church. Pray for our kids, the lost, our youth. Pray for the addicted and the hurting. Pray for our nation and our world. Pray for our leaders and our pastors. Pray for our ministry than we would be powerful and effective in the work of Jesus Christ in our communities.
Rock Church is awesome. I love our church, and we’re doing great work. But we will never be all that we can be for Christ if we try to operate on our own power, our own strength. We need the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We access that power through prayer. In II Chronicles 7 we read words that I suspect are familiar to many of us “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven and heal their land.” There is real power in prayer. I want our church to access and experience the fullness of that power of God.
I believe God has amazing things in store for us. I don’t want to miss out on any of it. So, if you know as I absolutely do know, that there is power in prayer, and if you are as convinced as I am that our church needs that power from the Holy Spirit to be all that it can be, I invite you to join me in prayer this Sunday morning before our respective services. I believe God is preparing to do something great in and through us, but it needs to begin with us on our knees.
This Sunday we will continue our Series “Real Hope.” It has been a great series, and I know you won’t want to miss this week as we dig into what it really means to have FREEDOM in Christ.
God Bless,
Pastor Steve