Frontline Arlington Fast

Hello Frontline Arlington,

I am excited to fast with you from Saturday night to Sunday night. Fasting for me has always led to a greater understanding of how God is truly my provider and satisfier. Over the years when I have fasted regularly I have found my hunger for the Lord increasing. As you fast this weekend here are two things to pray for:

1) As you saturate your mind with the Word of God pray that you would hunger to know God more! That you would allow Him to be the ultimate satisfier of your needs. Read slowly what Paul said, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” (Phil 3:7-9) I long for you to know God intimately and obey His commands because you are so captivated by how much He loves you.

2) Pray that the Lord would move in the hearts of people in our city to respond actively to the Gospel. May this be the year that more people in this city are awakened to their need for a Savior! Make sure to pray specifically for friends, co-workers, family and the unknown person who you have yet to meet.

God has started a great work in you and He will see it through to completion so I beg of you to flee from the “world’s” desire to be your satisfier. There is only one and He wants to be your supreme satisfier! Have fun getting to know your Father in a deeper way and together we will wait in eager anticipation to see how He will answers our prayers.

God’s compassion is to flow…

It is time for the church to rise up! We are to be the conduit of God’s love and compassion for the Haitian people. By now most of you have heard about the devastating earthquake that stunned Haiti.

Here is a brief description from an article I just read, “Haitians piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital Wednesday…death was everywhere…bodies of tiny children were piled next to schools. Corpses of woman lay on the street with stunned expressions frozen on their faces as flies began to gather.” Their President, Rene Preval, believes that thousands were killed.

We have to respond with prayer and care. I know many people are asking how they can help. I urge you to pray diligently and pray specifically about giving financially. Over the years I have worked with two amazing organizations that care for people in the name of Christ. They both share and show the love of Christ to people all over the world.

Global Aid Network (a part of Campus Crusade)-

http://www.gainusa.org/site/c.ihLNK3PFLmF/b.5719947/k.9987/MAJOR_EARTHQUAKE_HITS_HAITI.htm

Samaritan’s Purse-

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/

Please don’t allow the comforts of our lives here to numb us to the pain there!

Pray for the Suffering

As we take this week and focus on developing a dynamic prayer life I thought I would take this opportunity to remind you to pray for the persecuted church.  Often times we don’t pray for them, not because we don’t want to, but because we are unaware of the horrible things that are happening to believers around the world.

God is doing exactly what He said He would do, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades (Hell) will not overcome it.”  (Matthew 16:18)  This does not mean that Satan will go down without a fight.  That is why we must have a sense of urgency as we engage in intercessory prayer for our brothers and our sisters who are being persecuted for being a part of God’s plan of building His church.  “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”  (1 Corinthians 12:26)  Please make it a point to pray weekly for them!

“Suffering saints are the living seed.” (Charles Spurgeon) Let us be a part of watering the “living seeds” with our prayers.

Here is a link to a website that can send you a weekly update on how you can be praying:  http://www.opendoorsusa.org/content/view/5/14/ Take a moment and please sign up.

A Prayer Answering God

As we heard this week prayer is critical to living a life that glorifies God. Prayer is something we all talk about but so often we miss how truly central it should be in our lives. I think one of the reasons we don’t pray with greater passion and frequency is because we doubt know how truly effective it is. So I encourage you this week to go through the Bible and look at the different prayers that are prayed and pay close attention to how they are answered. I think you will be amazed how God answers prayer. You must always remember that we worship a prayer hearing, prayer answering God, a wonder-working God!

Here are some examples to get you started: Read 1 Kings 17:17-24, 2 Kings 6:8-20, Acts 12:1-19.

If God answered their prayers what would lead you to believe He doesn’t want to answer your prayers? God may not always answer the way you would prefer but He answers in a way that is for your greatest good and for the good of the kingdom.

Don’t just take my word for it….

“If you are a stranger to prayer you are a stranger to the greatest source of power known to human beings.” Billy Sunday

“There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God.” Brother Lawrence

“Don’t pray when you feel like it. Have an appointment with the Lord and keep it. A man is powerful on his knees.” Corrie ten Boom

“The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity. If we want to see mighty wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God’s standing challenge, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not!‘” J. Hudson Taylor

So I beg you to not delay and begin NOW a life of prayer!!

Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding

I had to remind myself today to tap into the love, grace and wisdom of God that surpasses all understanding.  I long to have a “spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better.”  I told myself that if I truly hungered to know Him my mind and my heart would be so consumed with passion that every thought or action would be for the glory of God.  Christ’s love then would be accurately displayed in my life.  We live in a world that is confused about God and Christ.  Let us not live in such a way that causes more confusion but let us live in such a way that brings clarity to how AWESOME our God is.  Have faith and fun knowing you are here by the grace of God to display His awesomeness!     

Slow Down

I often miss how awesome God is because I think the more I accomplish in a given day the happier I will be.  This is partly true but when we are constantly operating at 100 mph we miss the greatness of our Creator that we would so easily see if we sometimes operated at 15 mph.  Make it a point weekly to slow down and enjoy your surroundings, allowing God’s creation, His artwork, to show you His greatness and love as our Creator. 

Repentance

When we repent it should be out of genuine obedience rooted in love and reverence for God.  So often it is rooted in our selfishness as we try to avoid punishment.  We are trying to take advantage of God’s grace.  You can’t love or have reverence for someone you don’t know, so make sure to be daily growing in your knowledge of the Lord.  May this lead you down a path of authentic and freeing repentance.

Judges

I was reading the other day in the book of Judges and I ran across Judges 13:1 “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years.”  As I read I couldn’t help but stop and worship our Father.  So often I do “evil in the eyes of the Lord” and I don’t obey His every command.  This means that I fail to truly love the Lord because if I loved him I would obey Him.  Yet the Lord has not punished me to the full amount that I deserve.  As I thought about this I immediately had to ask for forgiveness but then I was immediately overwhelmed by the grace of God.  May we all remember the grace of God and worship Him in all aspects of our life!
 

Strengths

Over the last couple of weeks our team has been talking a lot about our individual strengths (looking at our Strengths Finder 2.0 test results) and now I am going to look at how all these strengths fit together to glorify God in the ministry. Part of the process is developing an individual developmental plan for each person to help them better understand how God has wired them (this is something I am doing over the next couple of weeks).
 
As I was studying this week I was reminded of how our strengths if used to glorify God are life giving, but if we use our strengths for selfish gain nothing eternally productive will ever come from them.  Here are a few examples in scripture of times when individuals failed God not in their weakness but in their strengths:
 

• Abraham’s strongest point was his faith (Gen. 15:6, Heb. 11:8-10), yet he failed God by his unbelief (Gen. 12:10-20; 20:1-5).
• Solomon’s strongest point was his wisdom (1 Kings 3:5-12), yet he failed God by his stupidity (he allowed riches, power, and women to ruin him, (1 Kings 4:26; 10:27; 11:1-6).
• Peter’s strongest point was his loyalty (Matt. 16:16, 26:31-33), yet he failed God by his denials (Matt. 26:69-75).

Let us never be overconfident because any strengths we have are gifts from God to be used to glorify Him. So as you wake up every day thank your Creator for your strengths and ask Him to help you use them to bring fame to His name. The power of the Holy Spirit will guide you every step of the way we just have to be willing to submit. 
 
“I am the vine (Christ); you are the branches. If a man (or woman) remains in me and I in Him, he (or she) will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”  John 15:5

Sharing

One of my favorite discussion to get into is how to share your faith at work. God has called each one of us to be intentional about allowing the love of Christ to be evident in everything we do. If you are constantly abiding in Christ this will not be difficult because you will be constantly overwhelmed by the loving faithfulness of our Father and you will be given constant clarity on why the Lord has placed you where He has. God has put you at the Pentagon, the White House, Booze Allen, on Capital Hill, the school you attend or teach at, or any other place you find yourself for a divine purpose. Here is one suggestion on how to begin sharing your faith:

Prayer: Pray for your co-workers/classmates by name, make sure to observe how they are doing. Have they told you they are going through a rough time? Can you see from their non-verbal that they are discouraged or depressed? Then take this opportunity to ask them how you can specifically pray for them. Never get so consumed with the tasks of the job that you lose focus of the people around you. After you pray for them show them your faithfulness by following up with them to see how they are doing in the particular area they asked you to pray for.

We worship a God who answers prayers!! I wait with eager anticipation to see the doors He opens for you to boldly share the Good News.