December 14 Message From Your Pastors

I wanted to write something that was helpful this Christmas,  and so I was looking for a great Christmas Tie-in to some super useful idea.  But then,  I decided (with Pastor Karen’s encouragement) to just write something that God has been doing inside me.  So I am going to keep this simple.  I was talking to a fellow pastor in the area the other day,  and he said something pretty profound:

“Anything that God can do, we can do– through prayer.”

Prayer is how God has asked us to activate his action in our world.

My kids very often make statements like ” I am thirsty”.  And then they wait.  What they want is a glass of water.  But they don’t ask.  They just state.  I think that we do that in our relationship with our heavenly father. We have needs and think to ourselves or out loud to others,  ” I need…”.  But do we bring it in prayer before God,  ask him for what we need?

Of course, the other thing that my kids do instead of asking for what they need is commanding what they need.  “Dad,  get me some water”.  And of course that goes nowhere either.

In the book James,  the author gets to this point when he says ” you do not have, because you do not ask,  and when you do ask,  you ask for your own selfish gain and ambition”.

Let’s be a church that activates God in our corporate and personal life,  by asking God through prayer for what we need.  Asking is not the same as demanding, and God responds when we simply and persistently ask.

There are lots of reasons that a church or person might struggle,  but let us make sure it is not because we did not ask our heavenly father.

Amen?

Pastor Nick