Worth Listening To…

You may have heard already, but some good music here:

Sojourn Music

Welcome Wagon

Nathan Clark George

On Prayer

I think these two images help picture the believer’s attitude in prayer. 

Beggar. 

Adopted son.

The country in which we live…

Just another proof South Africa desperately needs the gospel and discipleship.

On Prayer

James makes an amazing statement about prayer.

“The prayer of a righteous man is effective and accomplishes much.”

He illustrates that power by reminding us of Elijah who prayed and it stopped raining.  For three years.  

James also makes it clear however that not all prayers are effective.

He identifies three kinds of prayers that God will not answer.

1.  The prayers of a double-minded man.

“Let not that man expect that he will receiving anything from the Lord.”  1:7

2.  The prayers of a self-willed man.

“You ask and you do not receive because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your own pleasures.”  4:3

3.  The prayers of an unrepentant wicked man.

Note the qualifier in the following verse,

“The prayers of a righteous man are effective . . .” 5:16

Buying the end of slavery

Link here.

Plan for Getting Things Done

Need

Pray

Obey

Wait

Give Thanks

Whatever Happens

The Prayer Hearing God

The reason we as believers are confident that God hears prayer is because of the Bible.  God gives us reasons we should expect him to answer prayer. 

1. He’s the one who takes the initiative after all.

It is not us coming to Him saying please can we pray.  It is Him coming to us and commanding us to present our requests.  He’s pictured in the Bible as happy when believers present their requests to Him.  It’s a matter of obedience.  “Seek the Lord and His strength.  Seek His face continually.” 1 Chronicles 16:11  “A man ought always to pray and not to give up.”  Luke 18:1  “Watch therefore, and pray always.”  Luke 21:36

2. And you know, further, he doesn’t just give us the command.  He gives us encouragements to us to obey the command.  We see that in the attitude He commands us to have as we pray.  “Draw near with confidence.” We see that in the promises He gives to us as we pray.  “The prayer of the righteous man is effective and accomplishes much.”  How about what Jesus says? “Ask and it shall be given to you.” We find encouragement to pray not just in the promises, but in the stories that are told in Scripture with the specific purpose of encouraging us not to give up on praying.  Sometimes in the Scriptures we find stories where it is almost like God is overcome by people’s prayers.  

3. For those of us who struggle with doubt, He gives us all kinds of examples of ways He has answered prayers.   We find that in the Old Testament.  Think Moses.  We find it in the New.  Read the book of Acts. God commands us to present our requests, He encourages us to present our requests, He tells us stories about how He answers prayers. 

4. We see in the Bible God’s commitment to hearing prayer in how quickly He often responds to prayer and how much He gives in response to prayer.  I think of how James says we should ask God because He is the giving God, who gives liberally and without reproach.  The Bible definitely presents a picture of God’s attitude towards our requests that is very different than the attitude of important people in our world.  He wants us to make requests, He approves of us making requests, and He accepts our requests as a way of us honoring Him. 

5. If we needed any more proof of God’s commitment to hearing and answering our prayers, we find assurance in the Scripture that we are not on our own when it comes to prayer.  God the Son is praying for us.  Romans 8:34, “Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”  And God the Holy Spirit is helping us.  Romans 8:26, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

6. If we take our theology and apply it to prayer, everything in our theology leads us to expect God to answer our prayers.   Do we really think that the One who crushed His Son is going to lose interest in us?  In our good? Jesus’ work on the cross, what forgiveness means, what justification means, what union with Christ means, is that there’s nothing separating us as believers from the love of God and there’s nothing that can.  

 If it were just you and me coming to God, there would be no hope for God hearing and answering our prayers, we would have no reason to expect it, but it is not just us.  The reason we expect God to answer our prayers is not based on the way we would like things to be, but instead it is based on what God Himself has told us and what God Himself has done for us.

Answered Prayer

Good News!

We are so excited!  Django got his visa today which means he can come back and study.  It’s been so encouraging to watch God taking care of him as he sought to do what God wanted.

Ministry Announcement

I wanted to share with you an announcement that our pastor Joel James recently made at our church regarding our future ministry. I thought I might just quote what he said word for word so you’ll get the sense that this is something the church where we are at now, GFC Pretoria is sending us out to do – not just something we thought of doing on our own.

Now, he says some nice things in the middle of the announcement that I actually would like to figure out how to take out, but I don’t know how to do that without making the rest of what he says confusing and I guess too, I don’t want to take the time.

So, that’s why I left it in there. Besides if any of the nice stuff is true, it’s God’s grace and He likes it when we give Him thanks.

“For some months the elders have been talking about the opportunity-and eventhe need-for us as a church to do another church plant. It’s somethingthat’s in our blood as a church. It’s something that should be in the blood of any NT church, just as it was part of the essential fabric of the church of Antioch.

What we’ve seen as elders is two things. First, we’ve noticed that God has given us a wonderful group of people who are regularly coming to our church from the area of Sunnyside. That’s some distance to travel, and as you know transportation is often an issue. But we understand why they come. While there are good churches scattered all around the city of Pretoria, strong Bible-teaching churches aren’t thick upon the ground in the Sunnyside area. The second thing we’ve noticed is that one of our pastors has an incredible and unique gift in the area of outreach and church planting. And, of course, that’s Josh Mack. I’ve never met anyone who has the ability Josh has to minister across cultural lines to all the various cultures of South Africa. You’ve seen it; I’ve seen it; the elders have seen it.

With those two things in front of us, we’ve had to ask ourselves, if we have a Paul or Barnabas in our midst, do we need to think seriously about allowing Josh’s gifts to shine in a church plant in the Sunnyside area? I’ve said many times through the years that a church never needs to fear sending out their best to plant another church. If Antioch sent out Paul and Barnabas, then we can do the same, and God will fill the gap it leaves. God loves when churches like ours take that kind of step of faith, just like the Antioch church did.

Therefore, over the last four months the elders have been talking about making the sacrifice of sending out Josh to plant a church somewhere in or near Sunnyside. And we’ve come to the conclusion that will be the best thing for kingdom, and will use Josh’s unique gifts in the most effective way possible for the body of Christ. My perspective is that men who can do what Josh can do probably shouldn’t do anything else.

Now, this is a major decision in the life of our church, and the elders want to have a time for you to ask questions and to offer input as we move ahead with this plan. Josh has spent several months evaluating the opportunities in the Sunnyside area, and it seems to be just the place where his passions for ministry can burn brightly for Christ. And at our encouragement, he has been working on assembling a team that can assist him in the work. We wouldn’t want him to go it alone. Obviously I don’t have time at the end of the service to go into the details of all this. However, what we have done is set aside Bible Hour today as a time when we can lay out the plan the elders have formulated so that you can own and contribute to that plan as we move ahead in the next few months.

As you would expect, there will be a number of months of preparation before we can launch this project in full “go” mode. But there will be abundant opportunity for you to participate at different levels. Some can help directly, some through prayer, some with financial support, and so on. During Bible Hour, Josh is going to lay out the details of all of that, and then we’ll have a time where you can ask questions, give input, and just plain get excited about this opportunity.

Good churches usually have two responses to sending out a key person or people for a church planting opportunity like this. The first is, “We can’t do that! We can’t send out Paul or Barnabas!” But after that first, instinctual response, the second response is, “We can’t hog the resources God has given us. We must do this!” And I’m sure that’s probably exactly the tension you’re feeling right now: “We can’t do this! … No, we must do this.” If we’re going to imitate the best church in the Bible, we must do this. And by our sacrifice, God will bless the preaching of the gospel in another place. What a privilege to be used that way for the glory of Christ!”

This is me again, now.

Would you please pray for us. We feel our inadequacy deeply. But we don’t want to start doubting God’s adequacy to do what we can’t.

Also, specifically would you pray that God would provide the resources for us to move downtown. Where we stay now is free. And that’s how we are to survive with twelve people in our family here. But it is too far removed from where we are going to minister. Distance wise and then also location. We live uptown if you know what I am saying, and we want to move downtown. But to move down, we are going to have pay up.

We have found what we consider the perfect place. It is 2 miles from where thousands of refugees are living. It is huge, so we will be able to begin the church plant there. It has eight bedrooms – of which we would like to use three to house several refugees and orphans for in family discipleship training. (An African kind of L’Abri without the smart guy and the knickers.) Also it has a three car garage which we would like to renovate into a training center. And listen, we would only have to put down about 520,000 rand. We thought it would be a little less initially, but still that is about 50-60 thousand dollars for a pretty amazing place. And then we wouldn’t have to pay anything per month – only taxes. It seems impossible, I know but I figure everything I really want to do in ministry is impossible apart from God, so I might as well continue to hope in God to do what I can’t and commit myself to giving Him the praise whatever He decides.