New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

At New Life, God has blessed us tremen­dously.  In the past nine months, our church has suc­cess­fully launched, min­is­tered to our city, adopted 125 adults into covenant mem­ber­ship, and wit­nessed sev­eral peo­ple come to know and wor­ship Jesus.  We have much to praise God for.

But we can­not rest sat­is­fied.  We want to see God do more than what he has already done.  So why hasn’t he done more to this point, even though he has done so much?  Con­sider James 4:1–10:

^“What causes quar­rels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your pas­sions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you mur­der. You covet and can­not obtain, so you fight and quar­rel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your pas­sions. You adul­ter­ous peo­ple! Do you not know that friend­ship with the world is enmity with God? There­fore who­ever wishes to be a friend of the world makes him­self an enemy of God. Or do you sup­pose it is to no pur­pose that the Scrip­ture says, ‘He yearns jeal­ously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’? But he gives more grace. There­fore it says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the hum­ble.’ Sub­mit your­selves there­fore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sin­ners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laugh­ter be turned to mourn­ing and your joy to gloom. Hum­ble your­selves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”

James is clear:  we do not have because we do not ask.  As you pray and fast with us:

1. Ask God to show you the moti­va­tions that lie behind why you pray for cer­tain things.  Is it to spend it on your pas­sions, or to see Jesus glorified?

2. Ask the Lord to change your desires from being a friend of the world to being his friend.

3. Remem­ber that God accepts us by grace and through faith – not by our per­for­mance and through our con­tin­ued spir­i­tual success.

4. Sub­mit your­self to God and resist the devil (“the adver­sary”) in every area of your life.

5. Hum­ble your­self before God and ask for his will to be done in your life and in our church.

6. Pray for God to do BIG things at New Life in 2010.  Pray specif­i­cally and pray with faith that he will answer!

We just passed the halfway point of our 40-Day Chal­lenge to pray and fast yes­ter­day.  As a church, we are pray­ing for God to do amaz­ing things in us and through us in 2010.  We hope to see God sanc­tify us even more and use us to reach the men, women, and chil­dren of our com­mu­nity, nation, and world.

Last night, we were reminded in John 1:1–14 that our response to the Sav­ior who came into the world is to be stew­ard­ship, wit­ness, and incar­na­tional min­istry.  If you didn’t get to hear the mes­sage, you can lis­ten to it here.

For effec­tive­ness in min­istry, we need to God to move pow­er­fully.  I encour­age you to pray Eph­esians 3:14–21 for your­self, our church, and our com­mu­nity this week:

“For this rea­son I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every fam­ily in heaven and on earth is named, that accord­ing to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strength­ened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to com­pre­hend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that sur­passes knowl­edge, that you may be filled with all the full­ness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abun­dantly than all that we ask or think, accord­ing to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through­out all gen­er­a­tions, for­ever and ever. Amen.”

God is able to do far more abun­dantly than all that we ask or think, because his power is lim­it­less.  Ask God to do great things as you fast and pray!

I have had good con­ver­sa­tions with sev­eral peo­ple in our body about their time spent in prayer and fast­ing dur­ing our 40-Day Chal­lenge.  We have tried to post help­ful thoughts and arti­cles to help you in these spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines as you pray and fast for the glory of God.

Way back in 1995 (some of you were in pre-K), John Piper wrote a great arti­cle called, “What Should We Pray For?”   Hope­fully, Dr. Piper’s sug­ges­tions will serve to help you form the con­tent of your prayers dur­ing our 40-Day Challenge.

Also, we would love to know what God is doing in and through you dur­ing our 40 days of prayer and fast­ing.  Email aaron@newlifecs.net with your stories!

Last night as I was pray­ing and jour­nal­ing, I was con­sid­er­ing how unbe­lief affects both our pray­ing and God’s response to our prayers (as we dis­cussed in Mark 9:14–29 and Matthew 21:18–22 in our mes­sage on prayer and fast­ing).  We need to con­tinue to pray, along with the man in Mark 9, “We do believe!  Help our unbelief!”

Then I began to con­sider our city and how the unbe­lief of oth­ers impacts God’s work.  The Lord reminded me of Mark 6:1–6:

“He went away from there and came to his home­town, and his dis­ci­ples fol­lowed him.  And on the Sab­bath he began to teach in the syn­a­gogue, and many who heard him were aston­ished, say­ing, ‘Where did this man get these things? What is the wis­dom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?  Is not this the car­pen­ter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sis­ters here with us?’ And they took offense at him.  And Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not with­out honor, except in his home­town and among his rel­a­tives and in his own house­hold.’  And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick peo­ple and healed them.  And he mar­veled because of their unbe­lief.  And he went about among the vil­lages teaching.”

As you fast and pray over the next sev­eral weeks, pray that we would believe that all things are pos­si­ble with God.  I have been con­victed of my own unbe­lief dur­ing our 40-Day Chal­lenge.  But don’t for­get to pray for the unbe­lief that exists in the peo­ple of our city that we are try­ing to reach.  We want to see God do mighty works here, and we do not want Col­lege Sta­tion to be a modern-day Nazareth.