New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

We’re in our final week of the 40-Day Chal­lenge to fast and pray, and I want to con­tinue to encour­age you until the very end.

David Mathis at the Desir­ing God Blog has some great thoughts about the inter­sec­tion of dis­ci­pline and spon­tane­ity in the Christian’s prayer life.  God has cre­ated each of us very dif­fer­ently.  Some of us are very dis­ci­plined peo­ple who love to check things off of lists and who do not thrive on change.  Oth­ers are more spon­ta­neous, leav­ing plans and rou­tines in favor of the unknown.  Both types of peo­ple have strengths and weak­nesses, which is some­thing we would all do well to remem­ber when friends and fam­ily mem­bers who are wired dif­fer­ently get on our nerves.

My post is already longer than David’s (and not as good), so I’ll leave you with the encour­age­ment to read his thoughts.  Enjoy!

One of the things I would love to see in 2010 is for hus­bands and wives (includ­ing me and Kendra) to become more devoted to prayer for each other.  Andrew Case has writ­ten a book on inter­ced­ing for your wife called Water of the Word and has writ­ten a book on pray­ing for your hus­band called Prayers of an Excel­lent Wife.

My wife informed me ear­lier this week that you can pur­chase both books on Ama­zon for $9.99 or use the coupon code on Case’s web­site to get them for $4.82 each.  Even bet­ter, Andrew has made PDF ver­sions avail­able for free. Check out his web­site to read more about the books and the three options for acquir­ing them.  If you are inter­ested, I would encour­age you to pur­chase or down­load a copy and begin read­ing and pray­ing more bib­li­cally for your spouse this year.

Charles Spur­geon is known as “The prince of preach­ers” and will always be remem­bered for his ener­getic, Christ-exalting, con­vict­ing ser­mons.  What fewer peo­ple know about Spur­geon is that he was a man firmly com­mit­ted to prayer and believed that both the indi­vid­ual believer and the church should be devoted to prayer in tan­gi­ble ways.

Aaron Hen­drick, who leads our wor­ship team, pointed me to some of Spurgeon’s great thoughts that can be found in his famous devo­tional, Morn­ing and Evening.  Here is what he said on Colos­sians 4:2 (“Devote your­selves to prayer”):

“A prayer­less soul is a Christ­less soul.  Prayer is the lisp­ing of the believ­ing infant, the shout of the fight­ing believer, the requiem of the dying saint falling asleep in Jesus.  It is the breath, the watch­word, the com­fort, the strength, the honor of a Chris­t­ian.  If you are a child of God, you will seek your Father’s face and live in your Father’s love.  Pray that this year you may be holy, hum­ble, zeal­ous, and patient; have closer com­mu­nion with Christ, and enter more often into the ban­quet­ing house of His love.  Pray that you may be an exam­ple and a bless­ing to oth­ers, and that you may live more to the glory of your Mas­ter.  The motto for this year must be:  ‘Devote your­selves to prayer” (4).

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.

One week ago, we began our 40-Day Chal­lenge by ask­ing you to join us in prayer and fast­ing for God to do incred­i­ble things in our church and our city.  We are eager for God to sanc­tify us, mak­ing us more like Jesus every day.  We are also eager for God to use us to be his wit­nesses in Col­lege Sta­tion, in the Bra­zos Val­ley, in Texas, and to the ends of the earth.

How have your times of prayer and fast­ing been so far?  I don’t ask this ques­tion to make you feel bad if you haven’t prayed specif­i­cally or fasted at all to this point.  Rather, I pose the ques­tion to encour­age you in these spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines, which I believe will cause you to hunger and thirst for right­eous­ness (Matt. 5:6).  The 40-Day Chal­lenge is designed to spur you on toward good deeds (Heb. 10:24) and to encour­age you to seek God’s empow­er­ing and bless­ing for Gospel-centered ministry.

I want us to believe that God desires to do great things in our city just as he did in Corinth.  Con­sider Luke’s account of the words Jesus spoke to Paul about Corinth:  “And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision:  ‘Do not be afraid, but go on speak­ing and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you or harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.”

Amen.  Let’s pray and fast for our city, ask­ing the Lord to send us out to pro­claim the Good News of Jesus to his people.

John Piper taught a series in the late 80s (before some of you were born!) on Bat­tling Unbe­lief.  The mes­sages cover anx­i­ety, mis­placed shame, regret, lust, bit­ter­ness, despon­dency, and many oth­ers.  You can view and down­load any or all of the mes­sages here.

We learned on Sun­day evening that unbe­lief is the rea­son we don’t pray and the rea­son our prayers are inef­fec­tive.  We hope these mes­sages will help you as you fast and pray over the next sev­eral weeks for God to move through New Life in 2010.

Last night we stud­ied Matthew 6:5–18 and learned we are to fast and pray for God, not for man.  If you asked most believ­ers why they do not fast and pray or do not fast and pray very often, they would say that they are undis­ci­plined.  As we saw from Mark 9 and Matthew 21, though, the issue is not dis­ci­pline – it is faith.  Here are some quotes from Don Whitney’s book, Spir­i­tual Dis­ci­plines for the Chris­t­ian Life:

1. In order to grow in prayer, you must pray. Whit­ney:  “Andrew Mur­ray, South African min­is­ter and author of With Christ in the School of Prayer, wrote, ‘Read­ing a book about prayer, lis­ten­ing to lec­tures and talk­ing about it is very good, but it won’t teach you to pray.  You get noth­ing with­out exer­cise, with­out prac­tice.  I might lis­ten for a year to a pro­fes­sor of music play­ing the most beau­ti­ful music, but that won’t teach me to play an instru­ment” (71).

2. In order to grow in prayer, you must med­i­tate on Scrip­ture. Whit­ney quot­ing William Bates:  “What is the rea­son that our desires like an arrow shot by a weak bow do not reach the mark? But only this, we do not med­i­tate before prayer…The great rea­son why our prayers are inef­fec­tual, is because we do not med­i­tate before them” (73).

3. In order to grow in prayer, you must pray with oth­ers. Whit­ney:  “One fel­low Chris­t­ian may give bib­li­cal rea­sons to the Lord why a prayer should be answered.  Another might show us how to pray through pas­sages of Scrip­ture.  By pray­ing with a faith­ful inter­ces­sor we might learn how to pray for mis­sions” (77).

4. In order to grow in prayer, you must read about prayer. Whit­ney:  “Read the lessons learned by vet­er­ans of the trenches of prayer and let them sharpen your weapons of the war­fare of prayer.  ‘He who walks with the wise grows wise’ is the teach­ing of Proverbs 13:20” (77).

Over the next 40 days (from Decem­ber 7^th to Jan­u­ary 16^th), we are com­mit­ting to fast and pray together for God to move in our church and in our city.  You may fast and pray alone or with oth­ers and for shorter or longer peri­ods of time over the next 40 days.  What we do ask is that you would fast and pray for the glory of God.  While we are still imma­ture in so many areas and while there are still lost men, women, and chil­dren in our city, we can­not rest sat­is­fied.  Like the per­sis­tent widow in Luke 18, let’s pray with­out ceas­ing, expect­ing God to answer the prayers of his children.