Month: February 2020

Training Our First Group of Members in Using This Resource

I began training our first group of members at our church in how to use this prayer resource. Our group is not large, there are five people in it. Two of the members are very successful businesswomen. The other three are very happily retired members who have a passion for Jesus and His ministry. I am blessed to have these co laborers in Christ.

Our training will last four sessions all together. The first week I went through the history of how God led me to develop this resource for prayer and care. I spent time talking about the purpose and hopes in developing this. I think it is important to take some time to talk about this because it helps everyone get the same picture of how we will use this resource.

The first thing I trained our members on was how to add a prayer request from our prayercares.org website. We talked through the normal questions of how confidential prayer requests are handled- the person sharing their prayer request simply clicks on the “Confidential Prayer Request” button.

Next week, we create identities for the people in our training and they will become Prayer Partners in our prayer app. With this, they will be able to access our prayer ministry database 24/7. They can see for themselves, anytime they want to, what the church is doing to take care of those who have shared prayer requests with us- and these prayer requests can come from members / non members.

When I first built this prayer app, I was a network supported missionary. I would go to churches, conferences- really anywhere I was invited 😊 and share with whomever would listen to me about how this app could help them. Now, I am a pastor serving in a church and this is giving me an additional perspective on the actual use of a resource like this in a congregation and I am very thankful for this.

I am also glad that our “trainees” want to help improve this app with their suggestions- and they had some in our very first class 😊 As I shared at the very beginning of our first session; this resource is and always will be a “work in progress”. I am a firm believer in the Continuous Improvement Process when it comes to work performance and by God’s grace, He will grant the increase. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me with any thoughts or suggestions- jbuckman007@cs.com

Concordia Lutheran Church in Kirkwood, MO will hand out 1,000 Thanksgiving meals on November 20th.  This is an annual tradition of the congregation, as they seek to serve the families in their community.  Each meal is designed to feed a family of five; a modern-day “feeding of the 5,000”.  Prayer has always been an important part of this community service.  Staff and members lift up this outreach in prayer as the day draws closer and on the day itself, members of the church will ask the people driving onto the church, “How can we pray for you?”

In the past, these prayer requests were recorded on prayer cards, prayed for and then set aside.

This year, Concordia will use PrayerCares to gather the prayer requests and make them available to the Prayer Partners and ministry leaders in the church to access 24/7, pray for and choose who and how they want to reach out with mercy, turning prayer into care.  Prayer Partners will be able to enter their care notes in Concordia’s PrayerCares app so that all the members can see the follow up which is being done and best know how to help those who are taking lead in following up.

In addition to using PrayerCares to gather the prayer requests on November 20th.  The members of Concordia will invite those coming onto their church to download PrayerCares for themselves; this way in the future these families will be able to enter their own prayer requests into a local church’s prayer ministry app.

After the prayers are gathered, the leadership of Concordia hopes to sit down and analyze the nature of the prayer requests from these 1,000 families in their community.  It is believed that by looking at what people are asking the Church to pray for that Concordia will be better informed about what ministry those who live closest to the church actually want.  In this way, the ministry of Concordia is prayer based not program-based.

Yesterday I had the blessing of spending two hours with some of the staff at Concordia (picture above) sharing PrayerCares training and just talking through how this ministry outreach would happen.  Please pray for Concordia Lutheran Church and their prayer ministry which will feed thousands; not just with meals but with the life-giving Word of God.

God has given us prayer as a way for people to be brought close to Him.

In Isaiah 56:7 God says, “My house will be a house of prayer for all peoples.” (ESV). Martin Luther, in his commentary on Isaiah, said that this promise was God’s plan for fulfilling His promise to Abraham- that Abraham would be the father of many nations. It is clear that God hoped the nations of the world would come to His temple, “And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant— these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer.” (Isaiah 56:6-7 ESV)

We pray for our earthly needs, we pray for the earthly needs of those we love, but God wants more than being kind to those who are kind to us. God wants us to pray for the needs of all people; regardless of their relationship with us or even with Him. Why? Because God wants to reconcile the world to Himself.

The ultimate prayer is for God’s kingdom to come and His will to be done- on earth as it is in Heaven. Sin separated us from God’s will but it is God’s desire to overcome the effects of sin, both on His children and on His creation. One of the signs of the Messiah is God’s restoration of His creation from the effects of man’s sin:

“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
     and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
     and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
     and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
    and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;
    for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:6-9 ESV)

One of the times that we see Jesus get very mad in His ministry is when He cleansed the temple. This is recorded for us in all four Gospels and a plain reading of Scripture tells us that Jesus cleansed the temple at least two times- once at the beginning of His earthly ministry and once near the very end.

What was Jesus’ justification from Scripture for cleansing the temple? (Isaiah 56:7) His Father’s house was supposed to be a house of prayer for all of the nations. To understand why Jesus is so mad you must understand where Jesus is standing when He confronts the religious leaders- Jesus is standing in the outer courtyard of the temple. Why does this matter? Because the outer courtyard of the temple is the only place that the nations could worship and what had the Jewish religious leaders done with it? Turned it into a barnyard and a butcher house. How long would you stay in your sanctuary for worship if it was filled with cows doing what cows do and butchers doing what butchers do? You wouldn’t stay, you would leave. You can sin by commission and you can sin by omission. Jesus is not accusing the religious leaders of stealing by commission; He is not accusing them of having false scales etc. Jesus is accusing them of stealing by omission- they have kept God’s house from being a “joyful place” for the nations. (Isaiah 56:7) It is hard to be joyful in worship surrounded by manure.

We are to be proactive with our prayers. We are to reach out to our neighbor, learn their needs and plead for them before the throne of God. We pray for all people according to their needs, in Christ Jesus. If Jesus “book-ended” His earthly ministry with cleansing the temple, so that it would be a house of prayer for all the nations; what do we need to cleanse today? If we say we have no sin we deceive only ourselves.

God has given us prayer as a way for people to be brought close to Him. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life.

Our bodies are God’s temple today. May this His house be a house of prayer for all of the nations.

Amen?

“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” (Mark 1:35 ESV)

There are times in our lives that are very dark.  A daughter dies at the hands of a gunman, a grandmother dies after an optional surgery, a young father is claimed by cancer, a son commits suicide, a job is taken, a reputation is sullied.  These are some examples, we all have our own.

What do you do when you find yourself in a dark place?

This verse from the Gospel of Mark is even more powerful in the original Greek. Verse 35 begins, “And rising up, still very early, very much in the night….”  When Jesus got up to pray that early morning, it was still very much in the night; it was a dark time.

So where does Jesus go at this dark time of the day?  A desolate place.  Jesus was not trespassing, this was public land; it wasn’t worth much of anything, shepherds might be able to feed a flock; a lone piece of vegetation here and there could be found.  The Son of God gets up in the pitch black and goes where no one wants to be and it is here that He has His conversation with His Father.

Do you ever feel like life is black?  Do you ever wonder why there is so little life in your day?  Do you ever feel like you are all alone?  Jesus did.

The Gospel of Mark zooms from one ministry event to the next.  Over and over again we see the word “immediately” in Mark.  Jesus is clear about His purpose, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” (Mark 1:38 ESV)  In His preaching and teaching, Jesus knows that He will be walking in dry and desolate places as people come to Him with their hurts, their sickness and their sin.  Jesus knows that some will drink from the spring of living water He gives and Jesus knows that some will choose broken and dry cisterns instead.

It is interesting that the specific time of Jesus’ prayer is not recorded.  I think it would be tempting for believers to glorify this exact moment each day instead and lose the focus on the priority of prayer, which is that prayer should be a very real priority in our day.

Tomorrow when you get up, realize this- God has prepared good works in advance for you to do.  In preparation for your day, as you begin to sort out your schedule in your head and clarify your priority list for the day; take time to be in prayer.  Take time to talk with God about the things you expect to see and about the things which you will not know about until your day has come to a close.  Take time to pray for those you know who are in a dark place, those who feel that they are in a desolate place; God sent His Son to seek and to save those who are lost, wandering and feeling defeated by life.

The word for “rising” in Mark 1:35 is the word we get “resurrection” from.  The Book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus prayed with loud cries and moans for His Father to save Him from death and that His prayers were answered.  Jesus rises from the dark; He is life and He brings life to the desolate place.  Join Jesus in prayer as you start your day.