Praying for Our Association (Part 5)
By Larry Barker, Director • Healthy Church Solutions
Executive Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of six articles focused on “Prayer for Our Association.” (See the March 6, 13, 20 & 27 issues for the first four articles.) The Baptist Trumpet is partnering with Healthy Church Solutions and inviting your church to intentionally set aside time to pray for our association before the national meeting.
Who, What and Why
On Sunday, April 7 and April 14, we’re challenging churches and individuals to cover our association, leaders and churches in prayer prior to the BMA of America national meeting. It’s nothing fancy because prayer isn’t a fancy work, but a learned love language wherein we connect with God as close to face-to-face as we can get and have access to His power, holiness and sustaining grace. We can’t have enough conversation with God and in every sphere of our life. We need Him to work and move to help us be on His agenda. We want to see that happening more and more at our national meeting, in our association, in our local churches, in our families and in our own intimacy with Christ. So, we invite you to join us as a local church body, individually, with your family or with your Bible study group in a concentrated prayer effort the two weeks prior to the national meeting, scheduled for April 16-18 in Branson, Mo.
How
We are utilizing the PRAY acronym, which we often use as a tool to practice the posture and language Jesus modeled when asked to teach His disciples how to pray (Matt. 6:10-13). On Sunday, April 7, we’re asking churches to set aside time before, during or after the service to Praise and Repent (the first two letters of the PRAY acronym).
First, it’s important to take time to praise God for who He is, what He has done and what He will do in the future. We’ll concentrate on three main areas of Praise:
• Praising God by declaring who He is over our association, what He has done in our association and what He has yet to do.
• Praising God by declaring who He is over our local church, what He has done in our church and what He has yet to do.
• Praising God by declaring who He is in our lives as individuals, what He has done in us and what He has yet to do.
By focusing first on Him, we are able to rightly hallow His name and character by declaring who He is and how great He is. Then, we can state the ways we see His kingdom power and His will being done, carried out and further accomplished. Praise gets our eyes off ourselves and where they should be — fixed on Him. It’s only then that we can see ourselves rightly before a Holy God, and that should always lead to repentance.
Second, we don’t shy away from taking time to pray in the humility of a repentant spirit. Paul reminds us, in Romans 7, that our sin nature wages war, and we are far from perfect Christlikeness. So, we’re asking you to pray prayers of repentance over the three main areas we focused on before, repenting for anything the Holy Spirit brings to mind after praising Him.
• Repenting with our words and souls before the Lord at the associational level.
• Repenting with our words and souls before the Lord at the church level.
• Repenting with our words and souls before the Lord individually.
Usually, praising God uncovers that we have been guilty of believing untruths about our Father and that we need to repent of the lies we have believed. When we declare Him as our highest, we soon uncover other areas of priority in our lives that may be diminishing His presence and power and need to be repented of. A quick assessment tool for repentance can help us look at what we value most as an association, church and individual. We call it the 5 Cs:
• Calendar — what do we (I) spend the most time on and why?
• Contemplation — what do we (I) find myself thinking about the most and why?
• Cash — where do we (I) spend our (my) money most freely and why?
• Conversation — what do we (I) talk about the most and why?
• Cross — how do our (my) actual values match up to the way we (I) actually value the gospel and Christ?
When we dig deeper, we can uncover fleshly roots that God desires to expose and cut away:
• Wrong motives, quarrels, unforgiveness, envy or lack of unity.
• Giftings that aren’t being used for the kingdom or callings ignored.
• Lack of obedience to the Lord in cheerfully giving.
• We may have forgotten how precious the local church is to Christ or be neglectful of His Word and lingering with Him in prayer.
• Maybe we’ve been inward-focused and have not joined God on mission by seeking the lost, building relationships with them and witnessing.
• Are we discipling anyone?
A great passage to read and pray through is I Cor. 13:4-7. When we compare ourselves to this kind of agape love and Christ Himself, we have much to repent for, especially in our attitudes and heart posture toward others.
We will also have a prayer room available at the national meeting to continue praying this way, utilizing the whole PRAY model. Please look for signs and join us there for prayer and prayer resources. If you’d like a pdf of the PRAY acronym or the 5 Cs or need other ideas about how you can be in prayer, please reach out to Heidi Sorrels at heidi@bmaglobal.org. We’d also love to hear from you before or after the national meeting to know you are praying and to celebrate what God does through the prayers of His people.
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Larry Barker
Director of Church Planting and Church Health Larry Barker submits a weekly column titled, Healthy Church Solutions, designed to strengthen and encourage the local church.
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