God Glorifying Weekends Prayer

God-glorifying Weekends

Pray that West Cannon Baptist Church, our ministry and specifically our weekend services will be God-glorifying telescopes.

"There are two kinds of magnifying: microscope magnifying and telescope magnifying. The one makes a small thing look bigger than it is. The other makes a big thing begin to look as big as it really is."  from www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-to-magnify-god

The purpose of a telescope is to make objects from outer space appear as large as possible.   By viewing the moon or a far off planet through a telescope, a person does not see the object in its actual size but does see that which at first appears small with little detail much clearer.   

Pray that every aspect of our weekend will make God look as great as He really is.
Our time together glorifying God is not able to make God great.
It is meant to remind us of how great God truly is and we will never fully understand His greatness.

Specifically pray that...
our morning service will remind us how great God is as we look at Isaiah 14:24 - 27
our children's ministry will remind the children and family of God's greatness as they learn about how nothing can stop God from spreading His Gospel
our third study of Theology Matters - God the Son, will make much of God as we look who Jesus is.  
our meeting times will make of the One who is over all creation.

If our weekend services are about God's glory, our desire should be to show the Perfect God who sent His Perfect Son to die for our sin.
It shouldn't be an attempt to show our feeble attempts at man-made perfectionism.

Today's Resource is an article by Tim Challies entitled Whats the purpose of the church? Challies concludes the article with the following statement.  "Ultimately, the church exists to bring glory to his name through worship, discipleship, and evangelism."

For more Theology Matters prayer resources click HERE 

God Glorifying Equipping Ministries Prayer

“Regarding other people, our problem is that we need them (for ourselves) more than we love them for the glory of God.  The task God sets for us is to need them less and love them more." (p.19).

Today's prayer focus is that equipped members will glorify God at home, at work, in church and everywhere.

Pray that you and other members of WCBC will trust in the Lord and not fear man.  

Proverbs 29:25 says “The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.” 

All too often, a fear of man motivates our actions.
We avoid that person in the hall at school or work.
We don't say what needs to be said or we say what shouldn't be said.
We procrastinate because we are frozen with fear.
We struggle with doing things because seeking the approval of man is our biggest motivator.  

In order to fear God, not man, here are the seven steps Welch gives:

1. Recognize that the fear of man is a major theme both in the Bible and in your own life.
2. Identify where your fear of man has been intensified by people in your past.
3. Identify where your fear of man has been intensified by the assumptions of the world.
4. Understand and grow in the fear of the Lord. The person who fears God will fear nothing else.
5. Examine where your desires have been too big. When we fear people, people are big, our desires are even bigger, and God is small.
6. Rejoice that God has covered your shame, protected you from danger, and accepted you. He has filled you with love.
7. Need other people less, love other people more. Out of obedience to Christ, and as a response to his love toward you, pursue others in love.

You can prayerfully work through these steps

Here are a couple of quotes from the book to help clarify step 1.

"From Genesis on, nakedness, or the shame of being exposed to others, became one of the great curses in Hebrew culture.  It was a profound curse because it symbolized the deeper, spiritual nakedness and shame that needed covering.  It symbolized that apart from God's covering, we stand naked before him.  Noah cursed the progeny of Ham because Ham had gazed upon his father's nakedness, perhaps laughing at his father or ridiculing him.  When Job was in the midst of his greatest misery, he spoke of his dread and cried, 'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart.'"  (p. 25) 

"Because of sin still present within us, we experience embarrassment, shame, the feeling of being exposed and vulnerable.  As a result, we try to protect ourselves and avoid the gaze of others.  The ultimate problem appears to be the gaze of other people, but in reality the problem is within us and between God and ourselves."  (p. 35)

To order Ed Welch's When People are Big and God is Small click HERE

For a review of the book click HERE

When People are Big and God is Small audio:

Peer pressure, co-dependency, the fear of man:  how can someone escape being overly concerned about what others think?  This session shows how knowing the holiness of God and learning to fear Him is the only cure for the situations when people seem big and God seems small. 

For more God-glorifying resources related to our Theology Matters study go to
www.drodgersjr.com/p/theology-matters-2.html

Our Sin, God's Glory

For this weekly Fighter Verse devotionals, go to https://fighterverses.com/set-3-core-esv/week-16/

In our Fight Night Study, we spent a big part of the evening rehearsing the Gospel.  Below are two resources to help you remember/rehearse the Gospel.

From The Gospel Primer
The New Testament Model

The New Testament teaches that Christians ought to hear the gospel as much as non-Christians do. In fact, in the first chapter of Romans the Apostle Paul tells the believers in the church that he was anxious “to preach the gospel to you who are at Rome.” (Romans 1:15)  Of course, he was anxious to preach the gospel to the non-Christians at Rome, yet he specifically states that he was eager to preach it to the believers as well.
To the Corinthian Christians who had already believed and been saved by the gospel, Paul says, “I make known to you the gospel, which you have believed....” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)

He then restates the historical facts of the gospel before showing them how those gospel facts apply to their beliefs about the afterlife. This is actually Paul’s approach to various other issues throughout the book of 1 Corinthians.  

In most of Paul’s letters to churches, sizeable portions of them are given over to rehearsing gospel truths. For example, Ephesians 1-3 is all gospel, Colossians 1-2 is gospel, and Romans 1-11 is gospel. The remainder of such books shows specifically how to bring those gospel truths to bear on life. Re-preaching the gospel and then showing how it applied to life was Paul’s choice method for ministering to believers, thereby providing a divinely inspired pattern for me to follow when ministering to myself and to other believers.

HERE is a pdf of Ten Essential Gospel Truths

1. God is the sovereign Creator of all things.
2. God created people for His glory.
3. God is holy and righteous.
4. Man is sinful.
5. God is just and is right to punish sin.
6. God is merciful.  He is kind to undeserving sinners.
7. Jesus is God's holy and righteous Son.
8. God put the punishment of sinners on Jesus so that His righteousness might be put on them.
9. God offers the free gift of salvation to those who repent and believe in Jesus.
10. Those who trust in Jesus will live to please Him and will receive the promise of eternal life - enjoying God forever in heaven.

God glorifying children and teens

Pray that Student Ministry and Children's Ministry leaders love God and help children, teens, and families love God.

Specifically, pray for the last couple of weeks of school year activities.
Also, pray for those going to summer camps at Lincoln Lake, Lake Ann, and Algonquin and our upcoming Vacation Bible School.

Here is the manuscript of what the children did in the Connection Time (9:30 to around 10:00) this past Sunday.

Is God's Word important?

Why?

There are other things that are important too… homework, video games, free time… right?

I know that because we spend our time on them! But how often do we take time for God’s Word? Just Sundays? Some of you may take time to read your Bible every day- have devos or quiet time, maybe you have a devotional book you’re reading through. But sometimes we don’t read our Bibles because we don’t know what to read or what to do after we’ve read some verses.

I want to take this time to show you something I do during quiet time and something our family does to help us learn and understand God’s Word.

Let's read 96:9,10.

Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; 

Tremble before him, all the earth! 

Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns!  

Yes, the world is established;

it shall never be moved;  

he will judge the peoples with equity.”

These are the Fighter verses from this past week. If you don't know, fighterverses.com is a memory verse plan is designed to help individuals fight sin by knowing and believing God more.

There are three things we’re going to do with this verse today:

1. Get it in our minds by trying to memorize it.
Read together 2x
Try filling in blanks (show app)

2. Look more closely at the verse and observe some things.
Who are the commands directed toward? Triangle around everything that refers to God.
What describes God and what he does? Box those. Splendor of holiness, reigns, judge.

3. Let’s make some connections and talk about what this means.
Man- God
Worship splendor of holiness
Tremble reigns
Say judge

So we are to worship (praise, honor, think about) God for his being holy, we are also to tremble at this as you would coming before a king (respect, take serioulsly) and then we are to Say that the Lord reigns and that he will judge the people fairly. Now I want to show you how I studied this a little more.

Is that last part good news? Not if that’s all there is!

Let’s look up Rom 3:23?
We’ve all sinned and fallen short of God’s holiness so being judged as to whether we’re good or bad, we would fairly be judged that we are bad. And we can’t do anything to change that. But that’s where the good news comes in!

Read 1 John 4:10. That’s amazing!

Read 2 Cor 5:21.
Because Jesus became sin for us we that is why we can worship God in the splendor of his holiness! (Rom 9:9,10 - saved from judgment)

Does He reign? Yes! This means 3 things…

1. If He reigns, I do not!

2. If He reigns, I must worship him! Spend time with him, thinking about life his way, repenting of my sin, this changes us. (ideas of how to spend time with him)

3. If He reigns I must tell others!

Psalm 96:9,10

Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness;

Tremble before him, all the earth!
Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns! Yes, the world is established;

it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.”

https://fighterverses.com/set-3-core-esv/week-15/

For more God-glorifying resources related to our Theology Matters study go to

www.drodgersjr.com/p/theology-matters-2.html

God Glorifying Leaders Prayer

Here are some God-glorifying prayers for church leaders at West Cannon Baptist Church and any church.  

Would you pray these prayers for church leaders today, and then invite others in your congregation to join you?

1.  Pray they will keep their eyes on God.

King Jehoshaphat faced three combined enemy armies, and he did not know what to do – except to lock his eyes on God. That’s the answer any time we have no clue about next steps.

“For we are powerless before this vast number that comes to fight against us. We do not know what to do, but we look to You.” (2 Chron. 20:12, HCSB)

2. Pray they will not take a step apart from God’s leading.

Moses prayed this prayer when God would send only an angel to lead His people after their fiasco with the golden calf. He would rather the people not start the journey if God Himself were not leading them.

“If Your presence does not go,” Moses responded to Him, “don’t make us go up from here.” (Exod. 33:15)

3. Pray they will beware of relying on their own strength instead of God's

David, who knew the Lord is the one who fights for him (1 Sam. 17:47), trusted in his own might when he took a census of the Hebrew armies. Recognizing his sin, he prayed a prayer most leaders need to pray at some point:

“I have sinned greatly in what I’ve done. Now, Lord, because I’ve been very foolish, please take away Your servant’s guilt.” (2 Sam 24:10)

4. Pray they will be wise in leading God’s people.

When Solomon might have asked for much more, he instead asked God to give him a “listening heart” as he governed the people of God. All of us who lead congregations need this wisdom.

“So give Your servant an obedient heart to judge Your people and to discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of Yours?” (1 Kgs. 3:9)

These are the first 4 of the 9 prayers at thomrainer.com/2014/12/nine-ways-pray-church-leaders/

Today's Resource is Knowing God by J.I. Packer.

Each day this week we will be sharing a prayer focus along with a book designed to help you focus on God and His glory.  These five suggestions are not meant to overwhelm.  They are meant to help provide options for your reading list. 

"God is Lord and King over His world; He rules all things for His own glory, displaying His perfections in all that He does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore Him."

To order Knowing God through Amazon click HERE.

Tim Challies, author and blogger, occassionally does a series of blog posts entitled "Reading Classics Together."  In 2015, he encouraged people to read Packer's Knowing God.  Here is a list of the posts related to this book.

• How to Avoid Doing Theology All Wrong 
• Love is a Risky Business
• The Heart of the Unbeliever's Unbelief
• Stop, Look and Consider
• The Wise God and the Suffering Christian
• Perversity as Pathetic as Impoverishing
• God is His Own Executioner
• Two Serious Misconceptions about God's Wrath

For more God-glorifying resources related to our Theology Matters study go to
www.drodgersjr.com/p/theology-matters-2.html

God Glorifying Outreach Prayer

Note:  Since the original post, there have been some corrections and the addition of the link to a free pdf copy of  For the Love of God Vol. 1

In the opening paragraph of the For the Love of God Volume 1 devotional on April 23, D.A. Carson's writes

"One of the inevitable characteristics of those who genuinely praise the Lord is that they want others to join with them in their praise. They recognize that if God is the sort of God their praises say he is, then he ought to be recognized by others. Moreover, one of the reasons for praising the Lord is to thank him for the help he has provided. If then we see others in need of the same sort of help, isn’t it natural for us to share our own experience of God’s provision, in the hope that others will seek God’s help? And will this not result in an enlarging circle of praise?"

This explains why our local outreach and missions must be God-glorifying.   The God who is worthy of our praise should be praised by others.
In this devotional, Carson goes on to explain how Psalm 34 shows that we should testify of God's grace.  

God is awesome, all-powerful, and infinite.  Our one week study on God the Father doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the attributes of God.  
Hopefully, the study helped whet your desire to know more about who God is.  
The following quote is from Jerry Bridges' book The Joy of Fearing God.

Pray that the local outreaches and our missionaries around the world would give God the glory that He deserves and that they would help others glorify Him.  

Here are a couple, not all, local ministry you can pray for:

• Alpha Center of Lowell - www.afclowell.org/
• Hand 2 Hand - hand2handbackpack.org/
• Life Matters Worldwide - www.lifemattersww.org/Get-Involved/Pray
• Mel Trotter Ministries - www.meltrotter.org

Today's Book Resource is John Piper's Let the Nations Be Glad!
Each day this week we will be sharing a prayer focus along with a book designed to help you focus on God and His glory.  These five suggestions are not meant to overwhelm.  They are meant to help provide options for your reading list. 

The quote that best summarizes this book is “Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man."
For a video and summary of the book, click HERE
For a review of this book, click HERE





For more God-glorifying resources related to our Theology Matters study go to
www.drodgersjr.com/p/theology-matters-2.html