Two Prayers based on Romans 5

One of the questions in Soul Care tonight involved writing a prayer based on the Romans 5 passage Pastor Andrew preached on this past Sunday.

Here are two of them...

Our loving Heavenly Father,
We thank you today for the obedience of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.  By His obedience to Your will in coming into this sinful world and taking upon Himself our sin, we now enjoy the forgiveness of our sin and justification.  Our disobedience has been completely forgiven because of His obedience.  We thank You that where our sin abounded, Your grace abounded much more.   For this we give you praise forever!  Amen

Dear Lord,
Thank you for not leaving us in our sin to face eternal death. Thank you for the free gift of salvation and for manifesting your grace to us by sending your son to pay the penalty for our sin. We acknowledge that there is nothing we could do to earn or deserve your free gift which declared us righteous by the shedding of Christ's blood. Please help us live in a way that manifests to others that sin is no longer reigning in our lives.
Thank you that even when we fail you, your grace and forgiveness abounds. You love us unfailingly. Help us to seek and take advantage of opportunities to share the good news of the Gospel with those who are still allowing sin to rule their lives. Help us to live with joy and victory as the liberated saints that we are. In Jesus name, we fight on!

SERVING

Service quotes
Selfishness, which does nothing but foster the status quo, is comfortable.  Putting others' needs first can be awkward.

45 minutes of prayer...

Here are some words and times to help think through how to do 45 minutes of prayer.

REMEMBER THIS IS ONLY A SUGGESTION!

PRAISE (6 minutes)

• Praise God for who He is
• A real simple way to do this is...
• Tell the group "we are going to praise him for at least 8 minutes"
• Have people in your group finish this phrase "God, I praise you because..."
• Remember quiet is O.K. 

WAITING (8 minutes) 

• Eight minutes of silence.
• Tell the group "During this 8 minutes of silence prayerfully reflect upon the prayer we wrote using Romans 5 and use this time to ask God to show you anything you need to confess.  Think specific.  Think actions and attitudes you need to confess."

BIBLE (6 minutes)

• For part of this 6 minutes read Psalm 42 or 119
• Then pray prayers based on the truths found in the passage you read.

PETITION/INTERCESSION (10 minutes)

• Pray for the missions on this month's mission prayer page.  This is the yellow sheet under the mission TV by the welcome center.
• Pray for your group's missionary.  Check the missionary page for the missionary update letters (www.emmanuelbaptist.com/missionaries)
• Pray for those on the prayer sheet
• Pray for your neighbors, family and others.
• Pray for ministries of the church.

THANKSGIVING (8 minutes)

• Thank God for what He has done for you in the past.
• Thank God for what He has done for you this past week.

SINGING (5 minutes)

• Sing a song with your group
• You or someone in your group can lead the group
• youtube has many great videos to sing or listen to
• Play a CD for your group

If you are a math person, you realized these times don't add up to 45 minutes.  Yes, that is correct.  Hopefully, this will not distract you too much :)

Pray for our missionaries...

Ken and Clea Rathbun in Jamaica.

Especially remember to pray for Clea Rathbun.  THANK GOD for her recovery from dengue fever and for continue improvement as she ministers to the children and others at Bay Life Baptist Church.

Be praying for Ken and Clea's ministry to the students at Fairview Baptist Bible College.
http://www.emmanuelbaptist.com/pdf_forms/rathbun.pdf

Also, be praying for our church's spring mission trip to Jamaica.

Praying for our missionaries...

Mark and Anahi Self

Pray that they would reach 50% of their support level by the end of this year.

As of right now they have 18 meetings set up for 2013 and would to have 30 meetings.

You can read more at
http://www.theselfsinargentina.com/mark-index.htm

Adoniram Judson resources

Free resources on Adoniram Judson from John Piper:

Adoniram Judson: How Few There Are Who Die So Hard

Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ

Doctrinal Statement and Prayer? (Part 2)

Praise God for who He is and not merely what He has done for you.

How can you pray this?

We believe there is one and only one living and true God, an infinite Spirit, the Maker
and supreme Ruler of heaven and earth; inexpressibly glorious in holiness, and
worthy of all possible honor, confidence, and love; that in the unity of the Godhead
there are three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, equal in every divine
perfection and executing distinct but harmonious offices in the great work of
redemption (Exod. 20:2‐3; I Cor. 8:6; Rev. 4:11).

Suffering and the misuse of Romans 8:28

Robert Jones writes there are "two problems with how we use Romans 8:28-29."

First, the promise of “good” in verse 28 is not a blank check. We are not free to identify the good as whatever wished-for thing we want, even a very good thing like someone else’s repentance. While these parents understandably longed for their teenager to follow Jesus, God defines the good differently in this text. Amid many other possible goods, God prioritizes our own Christlikeness as our highest good.

The second problem may be more common: How? How, specifically, does God use hardships to make us like Jesus? We must not let Romans 8:28-29 become abstract. The rich truth that “God uses trials for his glory and our good” must not become a Christian platitude. We must labor to understand what that might actually look like in any given situation.  To read the rest of the article click 
http://tinyurl.com/bcc-godandsuffering

Especially in light of Pastor Duke's sermon this past Sunday http://www.emmanuelbaptist.com/messages/rekindle/rekindle.09.30.12.mp3 on suffering and persecution, this is a good blog article to read.

Think about how these truths should impact 
- how we think about our own suffering
- how we pray for others in the midst of their own suffering