This Weekend's Message: Devote Yourselves to Prayer

One reality will have the single greatest impact on your prayers (or lack of prayers). That reality is what you believe about God. Who do you think He is? Is He distant? Is He indifferent? Is He waiting to condemn? Is He a pushover? Is He a well- intentioned weakling? What is your god like? Your answer will drive your prayers.

Here is the good news. You are invited to embrace – and pray in light of – the true God revealed by Jesus. This Sunday at Life Bible Fellowship Church we will wrap up our prayer series by exploring the God to whom we pray, and responding to all that is true of Him. Don’t miss it!

Dan

This Weekend's Message: God, It's Me...Again

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? We can’t talk about prayer without addressing the obvious question – what happens when God doesn’t answer? Jesus has a surprising response to that – you keep asking. God tells us that when something causes us to pray again and again – with persistence – He notices. For many though, one of the hardest parts about prayer is usually holding out hope long enough to keep asking. This week we will be looking at the idea that if something is important, if something has captured our heart so strongly, then it’s something that you can’t let go. I hope to see you this Sunday!

Matt Sasso
Pastor of Student Ministries

This Weekend's Message: Hi God, It's Us

Have you ever had someone ask you to add your signature to a petition? Most of us have. A group of people are advocating for a change and, in order to communicate the urgency and significance of this request, they add as many people as possible to the request. After all, the more voices that are asking for the change, the more likely the request will be heard.

Scripture tells us that God hears every prayer. There are no secret words or special codes. God hears it all. At the same time, Scripture continually depicts a special power that takes place when God’s people gather together to pray. God’s heart responds in a special way when He is pursued in prayer by His people. Sometimes we avoid praying with others because we fear that we will say the wrong words or that we will become vulnerable by admitting our weakness. These are very real concerns, but when we set them aside and instead prefer to humble ourselves and approach God as a people, we experience a response from God that is otherwise unavailable.

This Sunday we will explore God’s heart toward His people when they pray together. You will be invited to see a side of God’s heart that becomes evident when He sees the hearts of His people gathered together and crying out to Him.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Will God Give Me Whatever I Ask?

When I was 9 years old my father became paralyzed from the neck down. As soon as this happened, I began to pray one prayer every chance I got. I prayed that my dad would be able to walk again. That was a prayer that never became a reality. For those of us who pray, our most memorable prayers are often those that go unanswered.

When our prayers go unanswered, we are left to wonder what is going on. Is God not listening? Is He upset with us? Is He indifferent? Is He unable to accomplish what we’re asking? Is He waiting for us to shape up and stop bothering Him with so many desperate requests?

This Sunday we will explore what is going on when our prayers are not answered. We’ll explore what unanswered prayers mean – and what they don’t mean – about God.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Where Do I Begin?

Where do I begin? Have you ever found yourself asking that question as you face a task that is so challenging you didn't even know where to start?

There was a time when if my car broke down, I could open the hood and have a pretty good chance of figuring out what was wrong. But no more! Even though my truck is 12 years old, I open the hood and can't recognize the fuel pump from the alternator. Everything has changed and looks so complicated. Add to that the fact that my engine also has all this plastic cowling covering everything, I can't see it anyway.

But when I take it to the car repair place and they open the hood they don't see what I see – they see what needs to be fixed. They know where to begin. A little knowledge can go a long way when it comes to repairing a car engine. You can probably think of an undertaking that affects you the same way as well, and causes you to ask, "Where do I begin?"

But compare that to something you know and understand. In that situation you jump right in and get the job done because somebody taught you how to approach the problem at hand. A little instruction can make a huge difference. Knowing where to begin can be a big help.

When it comes to prayer, Jesus does that for us. This Sunday as we continue our series called "In Jesus' Name," we will look at what Jesus says about where to begin when it comes to prayer. He will give us a little knowledge about "where to begin." I hope to see you this Sunday. Have a great rest of the week.
Gary

This Weekend's Message: Is Anybody Listening?

One of the current ways that people use the Internet is to post questions and to allow the online community to chime in. There are a number of websites that host these questions. A person can go to the site, post a question about car repair or parenting or technology or lawn care, and then await an answer. Some questions are answered right away, but other questions simply sit in cyberspace unanswered. The person posting the question waits. And waits. And waits. The longer a question remains unanswered, the more the doubts will arise. Did my question really get posted? Is anyone able to see it? Does anyone know the answer? Does anyone care enough to answer it? What is going on here?!

When we pray, we can have a similar experience. Most of us are just regular people. We don’t have the ear of presidents or kings or celebrities. We end up on hold when we call customer service providers. So we have to wonder if there really is a God out there who is concerned enough to hear our prayers and answer them. And when God doesn’t seem to answer immediately, the doubts abound about Him, about ourselves, and about the power of prayer.

When we pray, we want to believe that God is listening and that He cares. God invites us to believe this, but this belief is not based on who we are or things that we do. Instead it is based on who He is and what He does.

Dan

The Burden of Prayer

By Dan Franklin, Pastor of Teaching 

While Jesus was on the earth, His disciples asked Him many foolish and misdirected questions. Many of their questions reflected shallow faith, self- consumed hearts, and ignorance of the big picture. But I think most of us are grateful that one day Jesus’ disciples came to Him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). After all, who hasn’t felt daunted by the task of prayer? At one time or another, everyone has wondered how to pray.

Do we pray out loud? Do we bow our knees? Can we open our eyes? Do we address the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit? Or all three? Do we need to start with thanksgiving before we get to our requests? What requests are okay and what requests are selfish? What does it mean to pray in Jesus’ name, and what does it mean to pray according to God’s will? Should we pray all the time or should we pray at set times? Should we pray with others or lock ourselves in a prayer closet? These are only some of the many questions that can paralyze us as we approach the subject of prayer.

And then many of us feel guilty that we don’t pray more. Prayer feels like a burden instead of an invitation. And then we feel bad when we approach God in our desperate times. We feel like fair-weather fans showing up at the championship game after ignoring our team for the entire year.

But what if we thought about prayer in a different way? What if it was not a burdensome obligation, but rather a stunning invitation? The Creator and Redeemer of mankind has opened the gates of heaven so that His people can speak to Him, to confess to Him, to cry out for help, and to pour out our hearts. Why in the world would we need to be convinced to take advantage of this amazing invitation? We would not consider an invitation to the White House an obligation. We would not consider tickets to the Super Bowl as an obligation. When we view prayer as a burden, we respond foolishly to an unthinkably gracious offer from God.

Beginning on October 20, we will begin a message series at LBF called In Jesus’ Name. This series is the result of an elder-led desire to grow into a church that is marked by prayer. In the six-week series we will deal with a number of questions. Some will be as simple as, “What is prayer?” Some will be as complex as, “Will God give me what I ask for?”

Maybe you are at a point in your life where you desperately want to grow in the area of prayer. Maybe you are at a point in your life where you feel paralyzed at the thought of prayer. Maybe you are not sure if you believe in prayer at all. Wherever you find yourself, this series will answer questions, open hearts, and present an invitation to a deeper and richer relationship with God.