• 9am – Tuesday, online only
• 2/28/24 – Learning Lab for Intercessory Prayer 6pm, 12 Bassett Street PVD
• 2/28/24 – Heart Worship & Prayer Service 7pm, 12 Bassett Street PVD

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

• Ephesians 4:1-6

PRAYER GUIDE

The Aposle Paul has just spent the past three chapters telling the Ephesian church who they are in the Messiah Jesus. Three chapters, rooting their identity in the love and calling of God, who has raised them from death to life and lavished his grace on them, adopting them and predestining them to be conformed to the image of His Son. 

Now Paul shifts from the indicative to the imperative mood for the first time in this letter. Now, in chapter 4, he tells the Ephesians how they are to live because of their identity and calling. As it turns out, a life worthy of the calling of Jesus is one of humility and gentleness. Jesus, we learn in Matthew 11 is “gentle and humble in heart.” Paul calls us to be like him. A life worthy of the calling of Jesus is a life of patience…a life in which we “bear with one another in love.” 

Paul is under no illusion that life in any kind of human community is easy. He knows that the closer the community, the easier it is for us to become angry, harsh, or bitter with each other. But the hallmark and calling card of God’s Kingdom community is the Spirit of Jesus, which empowers his followers to live with Jesus’ patience, love, humility, and gentleness in a world full of anger, bitterness, strife, posturing, and competition. 

In a world divided by race, class, politics, gender, geography, nationality, and nearly every other human category that exists…the church exists to put on display the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers and powers and authorities, by gathering together male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, people from every tribe, nation, and tongue into an other-worldly community smack dab in the middle of this divided world as a sign post of the age to come. 

But as Paul reminds us in the verses above, we must live into this calling. We must recognize the importance of our unity. And prioritize it. Paul therefore commands us to “make every effort,” to keep the “unity of the Spirit.” Because after all, there is only one church, one faith, one Lord, one baptism. Our job is to make this reality visible on the earth. It is our unity, hard-fought, gained through prayer, through grace and truth conversations, through renouncing our own way, our own ego, and the ways of the world, that will stand as the brightest signal to the world that Jesus is Lord of the world and His Kingdom is coming. 

As we consider past revivals, some of the first levers the devil pulls (and unfortunately, often the only ones he has to) to disrupt or derail awakenings and revivals are strategies to undermine the unity of God’s people. The First Great Awakening was halted because of disunity in the clergy. The Azusa Street Revival was undermined by factions. If indeed, we are due for revival, one of the most important things we can do to prepare and safeguard its longevity is to guard the unity of the church. Unity does not mean the avoidance of conflict or the absence of hard conversations. But it means we engage issues as they come up prayerfully, humbly, and following Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 18. It means we repent of bitterness and forgive others, as we have been forgiven. And it means we run from slander and gossip, dealing graciously and directly with those with whom we have conflict, inviting Jesus’ Spirit to bring reconciliation.

PRAYER PROMPTS

• Pray for the unity of the church…in your church but also unity across local churches and denominations.
• Pray that churches will collaborate and partner together as the Spirit leads.
• Pray for conflicts to be resolved in a holy way that glorifies God
• Pray for God to uproot bitterness, starting in our own hearts.
• Pray for your “enemies,” those who have hurt you or others – that they would repent and seek reconciliation.
• Pray for forgiveness, starting with yourself and in your heart towards those who have wronged you.
• Pray for those who are proud and arrogant to be humbled in the church.
• Pray for the Church’s witness to a watching, divided world.

• 9am – Tuesday, online only
• 2/28/24 – Learning Lab for Intercessory Prayer 6pm, 12 Bassett Street PVD
• 2/28/24 – Heart Worship & Prayer Service 7pm, 12 Bassett Street PVD

“Sow righteousness for yourselves, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.” – Hosea 10:12

PRAYER GUIDE

Hosea 10:12-13 contains one of the most succinct and profound strategies for spiritual renewal. There are four aspects to this strategy. First, Hosea tells Israel to “sow righteousness” in order to “reap the fruit of God’s hesed, his unfailing love and mercy.” God is looking for a people to sow righteousness before they reap revival. In other words, revival is always preceded by acts of faith and repentance among his people. God is looking for our initiative. James 4 tells us the same thing, “draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” 

Over the past few weeks at Sanctuary Church in Providence, we have begun to sense a groundswell of confession and repentance for sin. This is, in itself, a work of the Holy Spirit. It is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. And yet, when we respond in obedience to the Spirit – confessing sin, turning away from it, and walking in the light…God honors these acts of righteousness as seeds sown in the ground. They will produce a harvest of unfailing love.

The second aspect of Hosea’s divine strategy for revival preparation is to “break up your unplowed ground.” An agricultural society would immediately understand the importance of plowing. Left by itself, ground becomes hard over time. It forms a crust that tends to shed the rains. It solidifies into something akin to concrete – making it hard for seeds to find their way deep into the soil, or to germinate, or to send down roots, or to push up shoots through the ground. The soil must be prepared. It must be turned over with a sharp object, with a plow. And this requires effort. But without this effort, the ground will be unfruitful…no matter how much rain falls upon it. 

In the same way, there are places in our hearts and lives that become hard over time. The habits of sin, the patterns of the flesh harden us. If we want to bear fruit in a time of revival, the soil of our hearts and lives must be tilled, broken up. Our routines must be broken up. Our hearts must be broken. If we want to see a breakthrough of God’s Kingdom, if we want to see renewal, we must surrender the habits and patterns and ways of life that have not led us into renewal in the past. These past few weeks, God has been asking many of us to give up social media, alcohol, our evening Netflix routines, and all the other ways we numb ourselves and take the edge off of life…trusting and asking him to meet us in those fallow areas of our lives. Let’s keep going. 

Third, Hosea pushes us into urgency. “For it is time,” he tells us, “to seek the Lord until he comes and rains his righteousness upon us.” There are moments of opportunity. There are windows of possibility in redemption history. It is possible to miss a move of God. Jesus wept over Jerusalem in Luke 19, because she did not recognize the hour of her visitation. Repent, Jesus tells us, for the time has come and the Kingdom has come near. Many believe we are living adjacent to one of these kairos moments. After five long decades of decline, many are sensing that the moment has come for the church in America and New England to be revived. The question is…will we recognize the moment? Will we realize that the time is now, and begin seeking the Lord? Or will we continue with life as usual, and let the God moment pass us by?

The final part of the strategy is contained in one word: “until.” Hosea calls his people to seek the Lord until he comes. As one preacher says: “we till until the ‘til.” We till the ground of our hearts and lives in prayer, we seek the Lord until he moves. Until is a word that implies holy determination. We will stop. We won’t move on. We won’t settle for what we’ve known or gotten used to. We are convinced there is more to God and His Kingdom than we’ve experienced. We won’t change the channel on what God’s doing…until He does it. 

PRAYER PROMPTS

• Pray for yourself, your family, the church and the Big Church
• Where is God calling you and his people to sow righteousness? Pray into that. 
• Where is God calling you and his people to break up the hard ground? The fallow ground in hearts and lives? Pray into that.
• Pray for a fresh urgency to seek the Lord.
• Pray for a determination to settle for nothing less than the return of normal, vital Christianity. The kind of Christianity we see manifest in every season of revival and renweal.

PRAYER ROOMS

• 9am – Tuesday, online only
• 2/14/23 – Ash Wednesday Service, 6:30pm | 15 Hayes St

“And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them.” – Psalm 115:8

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” – Philippians 4:8

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”  – Colossians 3:1-3

PRAYER GUIDE

You are what you eat. It is a biological truth. The molecules that make up your body are derived from what you eat. The actual matter in a human body turns over every 7 years or so. You are, therefore, literally comprised of what you have been eating over the last seven years.

The truth applies to our spirits as well. We are what we worship. In other words, we become what we give our attention to, what we focus on, what we take in, what we consume with our minds. This is why Psalm 115 tells that those who make and worship idols will become like them. 

What we spend our attention on is what will become most important to us. And what is most important to us will shape us spiritually. The average American spends somewhere around 4.5 hours a day on their mobile device (this is in addition to time spent talking). Major corporations spend billions upon billions of dollars seeking to colonize our brain space. They use the most advanced algorithms and human psychological insight to capture our attention.

These algorithms do not love us. They do not care about us. They do not have our best interests at heart. They are designed to do one thing and one thing only – to turn a human being into an income stream. They are very much like the idols in the old testament, in that they are the work of human hands. And like the idols of the old testament, if allowed, they will come to dominate and shape our inner worlds such that we end up looking less human, and more like them.

In the Old Testament, the very best kings and leaders (Josiah, Gideon, Elijah etc) were those who helped the people tear down idols and altars to false gods and who called the people back to worship the One True God. We need men and women in our own day who are willing to provide similar leadership by breaking their attachment and addiction to our screens and algorithms, and to reclaim space in our brains and hearts for the Lord. What if we gave Jesus and the Spirit of God some of the space we have ceded to instagram and youtube and snapchat and facebook and our newsfeeds? What could God grow in this fallow ground? 

PRAYER PROMPTS

Pray, starting with yourself, for God to break our addiction to our screens, our phones, and the content that is constantly vying for our attention. 

Ask God to break this addiction off in the church and in the next generation.

Ask God to enable us, by the Spirit, to fix our thoughts on Jesus and on those things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. (Philippians 4:8) 

Pray Colossians 3:1-3 over you, the church, and the Big C church. “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”  – Colossians 3:1-3

Ask for God to set the minds and thoughts of his people apart for his use.