9am – Tuesday, online only

PRAYER GUIDE

Psalm 24

The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,
    the world, and all who live in it;
² for he founded it on the seas
    and established it on the waters.

³ Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
    Who may stand in his holy place?
⁴ The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
    who does not trust in an idol
    or swear by a false god.

⁵ They will receive blessing from the Lord
    and vindication from God their Savior.
⁶ Such is the generation of those who seek him,
    who seek your face, God of Jacob.^[b][c]

⁷ Lift up your heads, you gates;
    be lifted up, you ancient doors,
    that the King of glory may come in.
⁸ Who is this King of glory?
    The Lord strong and mighty,
    the Lord mighty in battle.
⁹ Lift up your heads, you gates;
    lift them up, you ancient doors,
    that the King of glory may come in.
¹⁰ Who is he, this King of glory?
    The Lord Almighty—
    he is the King of glory.

Psalm 24 is a passage that sparked a great revival in the Hebrides Islands off the coast of Scotland not too many years ago. Many in the Hebrides were hungry for God and had been gathering together to pray for months at a time. Nothing happened, no real communal breakthrough took place until one night a young man, Bible in hand began reading from Psalm 24:3-4

Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
    Who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
    who does not trust in an idol
    or swear by a false god

Looking at his companions, he said, “Brethren, it seems to me so much humbug waiting as we are … unless we are rightly related to God. I must ask myself: Are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?” He then began to pray.… At that moment, something happened in the barn. A power was let loose that shook the parish from center to circumference… God had visited them, and neither they nor the parish could ever be the same again. (The Lewis Revival) 

Questions like…

Are my hands clean? 
Is my heart pure? 

produce in us a sort of reverential wonder.

They help us become rightly related to God. A Psalm like this can help us to seek God with greater honestly and zeal. It moves us from pretense and posturing to vulnerability and authenticity before the face of God.

This Tuesday let the honestly of Psalm 24 lead us to becoming truer worshippers.
Let it remove every mask.
Let it uncover every hidden sin in our hearts
and let it empower us to bring them before the cross of Jesus.

As we prepare to enter Lent and as we continue to seek God for an awakening in our region may we do so with reverential wonder

PRAYER ROOMS

• 9am – Tuesday, online only
• noon – Tuesday, in-person & online for Sanctuary leaders only
• 1/31/24 – Prayer Learning Lab: How to hear God’s Voice (register for headcount)

The journey of the Scriptures begins with us in loving communion with God (Gen 1) and ends with us in loving communion with God (Rev 22). The great theme of human history is God pursuing this course of love. God expresses His heart of extravagant love towards us in redemption by loving us even when we were His enemies, by loving us when we were powerless, by loving us when we had completely gone our own way and had no sense of our need for Him. If God offered us the staggering gift of Jesus and salvation when we had done nothing at all to deserve it, then we must not believe the lie that His love for us changes when we fail to deserve it after we know Christ. We can never deserve God’s love! Instead, we must embrace the beautiful promise that He is stubborn in His delight to love us. That is His true nature spilling out into His world.

David Benner begins his short book, Surrender to Love, with the following observation: “Imagine God thinking about you. What do you assume God feels when you come to mind? When I ask people to do this, a surprising number of people say that the first thing they assume God feels is disappointment. Others assume that God feels anger. In both cases, these people are convinced that it is their sin that first catches God’s attention. I think they are wrong — and I think the consequences of such a view of God are enormous.”

One of the most famous verses in the Scriptures says: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God loves, and love gives.

This is what God is like. 

Brennan Manning describes it this way:

“If we continue to picture God as a small minded bookkeeper, a niggling customs officer rifling through our moral suitcase, as a policeman with a club who is going to bat us over the head every time we stumble and fall, or as a whimsical, capricious, and cantankerous thief who delights in raining on our parade and stealing our joy, we flatly deny what John writes in his first letter (4:16) – ‘God is love. In human beings, love is a quality, a high prized virtue; in God, love is his identity.”

God is constantly moving towards us in love. He loved us before creation. He loved us in creation. He wept over the brokenness that has come to His creation, and He is working within redemptive history to bring us to Himself. He never ceases to deal with us in love. This vision of God is the throbbing heart of the New Testament where all things are propelled by the agape love of God.

HOW MUCH MORE

(see this past Sunday’s teaching)
And so as we prepare to pray:In Matthew 7:11, Jesus invites us to contemplate our own capacity for giving good gifts to our children despite our imperfections. If we, as flawed human beings, can extend generosity and love to those we care for, how much more can we trust our perfect Father in heaven to graciously give us good gifts when we approach Him in prayer? This “how much more” principle unveils the depth of God’s love.

In Galatians 4:7, the Apostle Paul further unpacks the transformative power of this phrase. We are no longer slaves to fear or performance; instead, we have been adopted as sons and daughters of the Almighty God. As heirs, we stand to inherit the unimaginable riches of our heavenly Father. This “how much more” revelation dismantles any notions of unworthiness, replacing them with the truth that we are deeply loved, fully embraced, and recipients of an eternal inheritance.

Consider the pinnacle of this truth in 1 John 3:1: “The Father has given us His love. He loves us so much that we are actually called God’s dear children. And that’s what we are…” This verse echoes the heartbeat of “how much more.”  We are not merely tolerated; we are dearly loved children of God. Our relationship with the Father isn’t based on our performance or merit but on His boundless love. In His eyes, we are not just loved; we are His cherished sons and daughters, embraced in the security of His everlasting love.

LET’S PRAY

Often we experience a rise and fall in our affections even for those people that we love the most. If we are in a bad turn of circumstances or a terrible mood, we struggle to summon warm feelings even for those who are most dear to us. It is easy to assume that God must work the same way. But hear this promise:

“All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ps 25:10, ESV). He is not shaken in His love for you by changes in circumstance or mood. He is not a Father that loves you, but doesn’t like you. You are not barely tolerated. He delights in you. This certainly doesn’t mean God ignores our sin, or neglects to correct and discipline us, but infinitely beyond even the most compassionate human Father, God always deals with us in loyal love.

PRAYER ROOMS

• 9am – Tuesday, online only
• noon – Tuesday, for Sanctuary leaders
• 1/31/24 – Prayer Learning Lab: How to hear God’s Voice (register on link for headcount)

27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”                               - John 4:27-38

It wasn’t that Jesus was not hungry for food. The journey from Jerusalem to Sychar was thirty miles. The average adult male burns 500 calories an hour while hiking. That means Jesus had just burned 5,000 calories. Of course he was hungry. His disciples were acutely aware of the need for food. They leave him at the well to go to the village to find food. When they return, the first thing they do is urge him to eat something. 

Jesus’ response is striking. “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” The confused disciples wonder where Jesus’ secret stash of food is. But they soon discover that Jesus is not referring to physical food. In the wilderness, the Devil tries to convince Jesus to eat something. He replies that “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Jesus realizes that he is nourished just as much by God’s voice as he is by food. 

In like fashion here, Jesus points out a profound spiritual principle to us. We may think what we need most is food – but humans can survive for hours, days, even weeks without it. What we cannot survive without is purpose. Jesus understands his ultimate purpose. His food is to do the will of the one who sent him and to finish his work. What was this work? In this instance, we see that it is searching for a lost and lonely Samaritan woman, who has been hungry for love, for security, for affection – but has been looking for it in all the wrong places. Six men she has been with. When Jesus, the seventh and final man, finds her, her long search is finished. She has been found. And Jesus is nourished by bringing her home into a relationship with Himself. 

As it turns out, our God is a hungry God. Our hunger has to do with our body and its need for nourishment, but God hungers for lost people. He hungers for lost souls. He hungers for this woman. And for her village. He hungers for you and for me. So powerful is his burning love for lost people that Jesus, tired and hungry as he was, spends his waning energy pursuing this Samaritan woman and her village. When you think of God, do you think of a hungry God? Who is not satisfied until he finds his lost children? 

God is inviting us into his hunger for lost people. All four gospels contain the story of the feeding of the 5000. God invites the disciples to join his longing for lost people. The disciples want to send the crowds away to find food to eat. Jesus turns to his disciples…and to us…and says “you give them something to eat.” Our natural response, like the disciples, is “Lord, there won’t be enough left for me.” But when we participate in God’s hunger for lost people, we discover there is plenty of food for us. The food is in the harvest. We are fed when we “lift up our eyes and look at the fields.” In John 4, Jesus and his disciples ate very well for the next two days in Sychar, both spiritually and literally.

As we fast and pray this month, we want to focus our prayers and attention on people who are lost and need Jesus, asking for God to make our hearts like his…hungry for them to come home. As you deny yourself food in this season, pray that God will attune you to his purpose – and yours. Jesus’ food is to do the will of the one who sent him and finish his work. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. May this be our purpose as well.

Prayer & Reflection: 

• Pray for 3 people in your life who do not know Jesus. That God will lead them home. 
• Pray for God to invade your heart with his own hunger, with his burning love for lost people. You don’t need to produce this hunger in yourself – but you do need to open your heart to the One whose heart burns, whose stomach pangs, whose eyes weep – for those who wander from Him. 
• Pray for God to use you to reach these 3. 
• Ask God if there is a specific assignment for you this week regarding your 3.
• Pray for the church of God to be invaded by God’s burning love and hunger for lost people. 
• Pray that God will release a season of bold and humble witness and evangelism in the church – and that many lost people will come to faith this year.