Time to Pray

Dear friends,

This coming week is a week of prayer. Our Sunday gatherings have been shaped around prayer. Our Growth Groups are being invited to set aside an extended time for prayer. And if you can find other opportunities to pray that would be valuable too.

We’re going to pray for Mission. We’re entering a season of heightened Mission. Starting next Friday all our youth are going to be on Mission together for Youth Big Fridays (16, 23 & 30 Aug). After that, for the following three Sundays, the whole church will be on Mission together for Share Life Sundays (8, 15 & 22 Sep). As a follow-up to Share Life Sundays, all our guests will be invited to look at Jesus more deeply in the Bible.

So let’s pray that people will come to know Jesus. 

But let’s also pray for ourselves that we might be so renewed in our love for God and love of neighbour that we long to share the gospel of Jesus. 

The chief commandment in the Bible is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt 22:37). When we talk about love, we are not just referring to a feeling but a heart full of affections towards God which results in actions that please Him. Actions like sharing Jesus with friends. So true love for God should always be demonstrated by our obedience to the call to evangelise. Love for God is the greatest motivator for evangelism because we want Him to receive the Glory that is due to Him.

But love for our neighbour is a close second. After stating that love for God is the greatest commandment, Jesus said “a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matt 22:39) Since we love God, we, therefore, desire all people to bring him glory. But there’s a problem; unless sinful people are saved, they cannot bring Him the Glory that He deserves. We must, therefore, desire to see them saved and that stems from not only our love for God but also our love for them. 

Think of when you became a Christian; it took someone who loved you enough and desired for you to be saved to open their mouth or invite you to church which resulted in them sharing the Gospel with you. It could have been a parent or a friend or a teacher - but someone loved you enough to share Jesus with you. 

The greatest act of love you can show to any human is to share the Gospel with them so that they may find life in Christ, escape the wrath to come and become true lovers of God.

There's 10s of 1000s of people around us who don’t know or love Jesus. Let’s pray that they might come to know him but let’s also pray for ourselves that we might have the courage, motivated by love, to be the tools God uses to make that happen.

I’m praying that you might find time to join with others in the coming week as we devote ourselves to a week of prayer for mission.

In Christ,

Nigel