: WORSHIP at 10:30 in Fellowship Hall (Greeting time at 10)/Congregational Meeting at 11. Souper Bowl Brunch at 11:30 (Bring your soup heated and mark containers with your name and kind of soup). We will be having an Acts 2:42 style of worship including communion before brunch. We will collect for Everlasting Life Ministries too. The Lenten Offering envelope will be used to replenish the Benevolence Fund.
Bring some friends!
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Good Morning House of Prayer! That is our goal and we all have a part to play. Meditate on the Connection Blog and Upper Room devo below. Gather and pray is part of being an Acts 2:42 church too. And everyone doing their part! Pray for God to lead you to your part and to help to do it well. I'm praying for that! Acts 2:42 says they gathered, studied the Bible, fellowshipped, prayed and ate and communed together. That is how our church is growing on Wednesdays and we get to experience that . Come and see that the Lord is good and is with us and prepare your hearts to worship!
Connection Blog
- A House of Prayer in Every Home, Business and School
The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace (Numbers 6:24-26).
Some churches are finding ways to combine the efforts of high school teenagers to bring God’s power in prayer into local high schools. Several church youth pastors in Chesapeake, Ohio, have challenged their teens to pray daily for five classmates. These students begin by laying a thirty-day prayer foundation by praying a BLESSing (B =body; L = labor; E = emotional; S = social; S = spiritual.
What they see God doing in answer to prayer is written out on testimony cards. These cards are received by the youth pastors and shared with all who are praying. When a school has twenty-five students praying for classmates, the youth pastors pay a visit to the principal and share the list of testimonies. They then offer to be prayer partners with the principal and the school.
There’s also the potential of starting new churches with Houses of Prayer. In Oak Mesa, California, Dale Roberts, a feed-store owner, started a House of Prayer. It grew! As he delivered hay in the region, he challenged others to start Houses of Prayer and provided them with a devotional booklet. Before long, several Houses of Prayer were started, and together they formed a church, which has grown to 125 members. Roberts has become their pastor. Every Pastor Dale challenges the members to pray for their neighbors, and during the worship service he invites them to share what’s happening in their Houses of Prayer.
A group of churches can also work together to impact their city in an extraordinary way. In Anchorage, Alaska, prayer leaders are deliberately planting Houses of Prayer in centers of influence as well as in residential neighborhoods. Houses of Prayer are popping up all over—in government agencies, at the city airport, in city newspaper offices, at television studios and radio stations, in prisons, in senior citizens’ homes, in public schools, and in neighborhoods. The entire prayer movement has been finding favor in the city. Even government officials are taking notice.
Anchorage’s mayor recently invited city prayer leaders to assist in dealing with a difficult issue he faced. Eileen Starr, director of the city’s House of Prayer ministries, reports that “many people are praying, and many lives are being changed.”
As churches work together and develop a common vision, the goal of a House of Prayer on every street and an intercessor for every person becomes a realistic possibility. When the day comes that all the major cities in our land have reached that goal, I expect we will see a spiritual awakening.
Father, You have instructed the people called by Your Name, to be a house of prayer for all nations! Thank You for the example of those who are taking Scripture to heart and stepping into Your kingdom purposes within their communities. May our homes and churches collectively speak blessing into our dark culture so that the light of Jesus will shine into the shadows and make a difference in the lives of lost people You love!
All the believers were together and had everything in common. - Acts 2:44 (NIV)
While my husband and I were traveling for our anniversary, we attended a bluegrass jam of about 30 musicians. As the evening began, it was explained that each musician would get to lead a song. They would take turns naming a tune, the key it was to be played in, and the order in which the parts of the song were to be played.
Throughout the night, as each musician laid out the plan for their song, others joined in and built it up, harmonizing and supporting the performance of the leader. Watching them work together by listening carefully to one another with no written music or lyrics to guide them was beautiful and inspiring. Even the strongest musicians made space for others.
The music was a wonderful gift that night, but even more so was the vision of this community that was so clearly built on love and supportiveness. It reminded me of what the disciples must have been trying to create in the early church: a community where everyone shared what they had and everyone benefited in the sharing. I left that night with a template of what such a community might look like and a prayer in my heart that we will all play our part in making it a reality.
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's Prayer
Dear God, widen our hearts to envision all of humanity as our family and community. Help us to care for our neighbors and lift them up in word and deed. Amen.
