EASTER SERVICES THIS WEEK: GOOD FRIDAY (9:00-9:45am)  and  EASTER SUNDAY (10:00-11:30am)

Week of Prayer: Day One

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What is the greatest need facing our church, our community, our city, country and world? What do we long to see happen more than anything else? How might God work in his power and grace among us and around us? 

However you might answer these questions, they each drive us to prayer as the ultimate expression of our complete dependence upon the Lord to do what we long for Him to do and He alone is able to do.

As a church we have set aside this week for focused, dedicated prayer for the life of St Ives Community Church. While there are four corporate prayer evenings on each night, the encouragement for us all is to have a mindset of prayer throughout the week.

Each day this week I will send out a passage of Scripture and an associated quote for our encouragement. Use these as a springboard to pray as you start the day. Pray with your family, with friends, with those who live or work nearby. 

As I said in my message on Sunday: We need to be on our knees before the Lord, before we can be useful on our feet for Him.

With praise, thanksgiving and much aniticipation,

Ben

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Pray the Bible: Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

To pray at all times is to live in continual God consciousness, where everything we see and experience becomes a kind of prayer, lived in deep awareness of and surrender to our heavenly Father. To obey this exhortation means that, when we are tempted, we hold the temptation before God and ask for His help. When we experience something good and beautiful, we immediately thank the Lord for it. When we see evil around us, we pray that God will make it right and be willing to be used of Him to that end. When we meet someone who does not know Christ, we pray for God to draw that person to Himself and to use us to be a faithful witness. When we encounter trouble, we turn to God as our Deliverer. In other words, our life becomes a continually ascending prayer, a perpetual communing with our heavenly Father. To pray at all times is to constantly set our minds “on things that are above, not on the things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2).

John Macarthur

2 Comments

Thanks Ben! I wonder what God has in store for us??

Yes, this is what Brother Lawrence called practising the presence of God. I am visiting a person in my volunteer palliative care work later this morning and am now reminded and challenged to approach this visit "in a continual God consciousness."

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