Lakeview Christian Center

On Mondays, the targets from the corporate prayer gathering on Saturday at 9a will be posted here. Here are this past weekend’s targets:

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“Attributes in Action”

God’s mercy/kindness – breeding repentance

-That God in His kindness would draw the sinner and the wayward
-That He would cause the pleasures of sin to dry up and get stale
-That He would give the gift of repentance to lost family members and friends who are looking for satisfaction outside of Him.
-That mercy would triumph over judgment in our church, our City, and our country; that we would not be given over to cultural captivity
-That the Church would not get ‘lost’ in the world

God’s sovereignty – breeding trust & awe

-That we would have greater and greater experience of the stability that results from resting in the sovereignty of God
-That our worship would be increasingly God-centered – that God would get bigger in our eyes.
-That we would evangelize with confidence that the hard-heart of a man is not an obstacle to the grace of God.
-That we would have eyes to see the sovereign hand of God at work in various ways in our lives.

God’s sustaining grace – breeding hope

That those waiting on God’s deliverance would experience sustaining grace:
-As kids continue to rebel
-As older sons and daughters persist in living life apart from God
-As singles wait for a spouse
-As the sick/diseased cry out for healing
-As miserable spouses pray for God to restore or heal

Once again, we find Mr. Piper assisting us with what to pray for:

One of the amazing things about Bible prayers is how big and sweeping they often are. Yet they don’t have the vague ring of “God bless the missionaries” that sounds so weak. We sometimes try to remedy this by saying, “We should pray specific prayers for specific people and specific needs, and not vague general prayers.” There is truth to that. We should pray that way.

But I think there is another reason why our big general prayers seem insipid, while the big Bible prayers don’t. Ours often don’t have much of God in them and don’t articulate what the great spiritual things are that we want God to do for “the missionaries” or “the nations” or “the world” or “the lost.” The words “God bless” would not sound so weak and vague if we said what the blessing would look like that we are praying toward. There is a world of difference between “Lord, help our missionaries,” and “Lord, help our missionaries to drink deep at the river of your delights.” Or, “Lord, help our missionaries rejoice in tribulations and remember that tribulation works endurance and endurance hope.”

Read the rest of the article here.

“The conviction that drives God-seeking prayer is that all true accomplishments in doing the work of God are really the accomplishments of God himself. When we pursue him in prayer, we are admitting that the real answers and the real joy and the real breakthroughs lie with God. Seeking him humbles us to compliant obedience to his Word and ways, for seekers must approach him on his terms. We learn patience and self-discipline. We flatten ourselves before God in radical dependence, crying out that he would make his blessing real to us.

…God-seeking prayer is persistent, tenacious. We reach out to him, and we refuse to let go. …When we are seeking the Lord, we do not settle for trite, easy answers. We want truth. We want reality. And we don’t quit until we find God truly and really. Nothing but God himself will satisfy. C.S. Lewis describes this mentality as ‘an appetite for God,’ a kin of gnawing hunger that defines satisfaction only in terms of God. …As lions prowl for food, ravenous with hunger, and may find no relief, so we seek the Lord, driven by a kind of hunger as well. But true seekers ‘lack no good thing.'” —Raymond Ortlund, When God Comes to Church, p. 182

On Mondays, the targets from the corporate prayer gathering on Saturday at 9a will be posted here. Here are this past weekend’s targets:

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“Church Covenant”

A Faithful, Persevering, and Committed Church:

-Grace to walk out our commitments consistently and continually
-Faith in God’s promise to bring his work to completion
-That we would feel the weight of what it meant to “sign our name” on the Covenant
-Spirit-empowered motivation to get back up when we fall

Committed to Christ’s Truth and Christ’s Church:

-Our lives to testify that Scripture is our ultimate authority
-Growth in a Biblical understanding of salvation and God’s grace
-A Biblical value of the corporate gathering and functional membership
-Committed to follow and lead in a way that reflects Christ’s humble character

Committed to Christ’s Economy:

-Grace to “make personal and corporate prayer a priority” and to “avoid its neglect or decline”
-Discernment to know what it means to pray “thy Kingdom come” in this city
-Biblical understanding of supporting Christ’s mission through finances
-To be led by the Spirit as he has us consider additional sacrificial giving.