Praying for Our Association (Part 6)
By Larry Barker, Director • Healthy Church Solutions
Executive Editor’s Note: This is the final article in a series of six articles focused on “Prayer for Our Association.” (See the March 6, 13, 20, 27 & April 3 issues for the other 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.
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 14, we are asking churches to set aside time before, during or after service to finish out the acronym by participating in Ask and Yield.
Instead of starting with Ask, like we are so often too prone to do, we’ve spent the last week fixing our eyes on God in Praise and adoration. Praise helps us to see Him rightly. We’ve also taken the time to Repent because we see ourselves rightly through His eyes. This week, we’ll concentrate on three main areas of Asking or crying out:
• Asking God to move in our association at the national meeting and this coming year, in His power and sovereignty and through His grace alone.
— We pray for our missionaries, church planters and their families around the world — for God to sustain and protect them and for gospel doors to be opened.
— We ask for unity in the association to move forward on God’s agenda for His name’s sake.
— We pray for new laborers to the harvest.
— We pray for new opportunities in unreached areas, for the gospel to go forth and for the lost to be saved.
— We pray to be known more and more as a praying association.
• Asking God to move in our local church.
— We pray that the pastor will be a healthy leader so he can lead a healthy church, and for protection and guidance for him and his family.
— We pray that the Word of God will be fully and boldly proclaimed.
— We pray for discipleship to be part of the church DNA and for all believers to be discipling and serving both pre-believers and other believers.
— We pray to be known in the community as a unified and praying church.
• Asking God to move in our lives as individuals.
— We pray that our intimacy with Christ is what it should be.
— We pray that we first choose to be with Jesus over doing for Him.
— We pray that we are disciples who make disciples.
— We pray that we are bold witnesses for the gospel.
— We pray that we are humble servants to others and use our gifts in the body, as we are called to do.
Last, we Yield to God’s will and sovereignty over all we ask and in every situation we are walking through. We don’t need a lot of words here. It’s laying it all down at the cross in a spirit of submission. We saw Jesus do this in the Garden, and God gave Him the composure needed to go all the way to Calvary.
• We yield to Him at the associational level, declaring that it all belongs to Him and He holds the future.
• We yield to Him at the church level, declaring that it all belongs to Him and He holds the future.
• We yield to Him at an individual level, declaring that it all belongs to Him and He holds the future.
At the National Meeting, we will also have a prayer room set up to continue praying this way utilizing the 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 need other ideas about how you can be in prayer, please reach out to 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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