We have a wonderful group of men that get together each Tuesday morning and they have been meeting for several years. It is a small glimpse of the 500 plus men that are a part of Woodland Park.
They have done all the curriculum of Men's Fraternity and we contemplated what would be next after studying outreach this fall.
After much prayer I was lead to offer a study on EM Bounds book, The Power of Prayer. As our church is in search of a senior pastor this also helps us be men of prayer. You are welcome to join us starting in mid-January as all of us can learn something from EM Bounds study. We will offer more details in the next few days.
But, here are words of wisdom that written in the 1800s ring true today:
"We are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man in the plan or organization.
God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.” The dispensation that heralded and prepared the way
for Christ was bound up in that man John. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” The world’s salvation comes out of that cradled Son. When Paul appeals to the personal character of the men who rooted the gospel in the world, he solves the mystery of their success. The glory and
efficiency of the gospel is staked on the men who proclaim it. When God declares that “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him,” he declares the necessity of men and his dependence on them
as a channel through which to exert his power upon the world. This vital, urgent truth is one that this age of machinery is apt to forget. The forgetting of it is as baneful on the work of God as would be the striking of the sun from his sphere. Darkness, confusion, and death would ensue.
What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer.
The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer."
E.M. Bounds from The Power of Prayer
So on this last day of 2007 how is your prayer life? What adjustments do you need to make?
Fun involving the Capitol One Bowl Mascot Challenge:
http://www.capitalonebowl.com/
In God We Trust is returing to coins this year, we kid you not:
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20071230/30683_%27In_God_We_Trust%27_to_Return_to_Face_of_%241_Coin.htm
1 comment:
"So on this last day of 2007 how is your prayer life? What adjustments do you need to make?"
My prayer life has been better the last four years since Debi and I have started praying together.
Robert Lewis convinced me that it was one of the most important things a man can do, and he was right. I still have a long way to go in prayer, but I find myself praying more when I read the scriptures more.
Praying is easier for me after I read, not before. Many, including EM Bounds, suggest the opposite.
Actually, to be correct, I find myself praying while I'm reading, not really after. As I here God speaking through His word, and I see new things, it just seems natural to pray.
One thing I want to do this year is to pray more for other people.
I find the list of people Debi and I pray for growing and I'm beginning to see how this will help us to grow. We are beginning to see God work, and experience His present more together. There is something very powerful and of great value in this, and it is very unexpected blessing.
Great question Hank, Thanks!
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