40 Days of Praying - Day 28

Growing Army of Ministers: Ask God to help all of us realize we are ministers. Pray He will elp us mobilize more people in ministry this year than ever before.

1 Peter 2:9-10 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood , a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Eph 2:10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works , which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Acts 8:1-5 On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. ...Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.

That last scripture gets my attention. The church is growing. Things are happening. Jerusalem is exploding with disciples of Jesus. Then persecution hits. The church scatters. Surely the movement will run into tough times. Do you find it as curious as I do that the apostles stayed put? Why didn't they go? Even more amazing is that the regular old non-apostles became ministers wherever they went. Like seeds from a blown dandelion, wherever they landed they planted churches. It reflects a strong belief in those days that though everyone had a different role to play, there wasn't a special class of believers called "ministers" and the rest were receivers. Everybody was a minister.

Somewhere along the way we lost that sense. I can trace it for you historically, but it doesn't really matter how we got here. God intended that in Jesus, every believer is a minister of the grace and good news of God. Can you think of ways that we perpetuate and participate in the mindset that some are clergy and the rest are lay people? I have been on both sides of it. I don't believe it is what God intended. Pray for an attitude change. Pray that hundreds of believers at GCR will sense their calling as participating ministers in the work of God in the Permian Basin.

God, release your people for great work. Make every member a minister. Let them sense their calling, know their ministry and pursue it with passion, diligence and joy. In Jesus name, Amen

By the way, I also wrote some about this in this week's bulletin.

Thanks to those of you who prayed for me. We had a great day yesterday with a whole bunch of kids. I love talking about the simplicity of following and imitating Jesus. They seemed to get it. Thank you for praying. God is very good.

Grace.