Prayer Teams and Groups

Prayer is so much more than just a list of needs or a litany of issues for God to resolve in our lives.

It is a time of fellowship and relationship.  First with God, then growing to include others.

We are called to pray for one another, intentionally, lifting up our sisters and brothers in Christ.

When I was first called to ministry, I was challenged by my mentor to start by creating a prayer team, even before starting to raise support.  It is still a strong group or prayer warriors that I depend on weekly.  Yet, I needed more.

The greatest lesson I’ve learned along the way in inner city missions is the importance of prayer in relationship with others.

I’m not talking about public prayers that are more for show and do not share or show our true selves.

I’m talking about the real interaction of lifting up Christ, inviting the Holy Spirit in and finding the place where God intercedes and helps us be truly honest and real with each other.

It creates a depth of communication and relationship where we start to see God moving in each other, in our own families and in the world.

Please take the time to join in a prayer team or group & reap the blessings.

The Cost of Mercy And The Price

I have a harder time finding books that address mercy than I do grace.

I feel privileged for a book written by my pastor, that I just finished, titled “The Mercy Prayer: The One Prayer Jesus Always Answers.”

Mercy is simple but tougher & harder to find than grace when you minister to the hardest of neighborhoods where there is no money to hide sin behind.

I find grace easily everyday.  It comes from God and his disciples serving here.  It’s free and costs us nothing to share.  Yet mercy asks the giver for a price and comes with a cost, I believe.

Mercy is forgiving the pain, suffering, and “just deserts” of someone that has created and earned the consequences.

It is ministering and loving the mother that abuses her child in lots of little ways. I do childcare for her son in the same room where she is studying for her GED so I can display the loving way to correct a 2 year old. I deepen my relationship with her to help her learn the right responses.

The cost is the realization that I have no moral high ground. I don’t abuse kids, yet I sin, even cause unintended pain to others, everyday, yet seek God’s mercy.

Then there are those where the sin debt is so vast. Like the alcoholic that stopped for a drink on the way home with his little girl. Locking her in the car safely on a cold day, intending to return shortly. But he found old friends and lots to drink, and he lost track of time. He returned to find the doors frozen shut. His little girl lost several fingers and toes to frostbite that day and will be deaf for the rest of her life.

For me it puts Matthew 18: 23– 35 in a whole new light.  With only God able to give real mercy, the alcoholic became a liar to himself and others, claiming to be a social drinker in rehab, forgetting the event in a haze of past drunkenness.

Yet, our God and rehab worked, and truth came to light.  He will always be an alcoholic, though in recovery, accepting his weakness and God’s mercy which is new each day.  Are any of our amends big enough?

The mercy he received and felt from Christ carved an easier path for mercy and grace to flow from his life to those he went on to serve.

The Lord’s Prayer reads, “forgive my trespasses, as I forgive those that have trespassed against me.”  The price to receive mercy is for us to show mercy as Christ would.  For me, it is not only for those who are broken and sinful around me, but also for those that, in sin, intentionally seek to do me wrong.

Covenant Love

You and I live in a world that understands contracts, not covenants.

Contracts are when two  parties, who both have something to offer, make a contract to obtain a benefit to both parties.

In our sinful selves, we filter everything through this filter, our relationships, even love.

Like marriages that fall apart due to inequality of roles, tit-for-tat with chores, romantic gestures, the hurts go deep.  

Our small groups at church are starting a study on God’s covenants throughout the Scripture.  For it is God who introduces us to covenants.

I’m learning covenants are promises made even without an equal benefit to both parties, when one has everything to offer and the other has nothing. They are made regardless of our failure to abide by our end.

I am quickly finding that, when God made a covenant with us, He never broke it.  We always (rather quickly) did.

Yet God never stopped desiring to have a deep relationship with you and me, or crave for us to abide with Him always.

So He took it on Himself, through the life and death of Christ, to create an eternal and unbreakable covenant with Himself as God, and Himself as Christ,. Therefore it is final and never will be broken.

There is nothing we can do or not do that will separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus.  -Romans 8:38-39

Though we are still sinful and broken, God will love us and seek us, whether we like it or not. And there is nothing we can do about it.  Our free will can push Him away or draw us closer, yet we cannot stop His love, hope or faith in us.

So, this month as we celebrate Valentine’s Day, whether single or married, alone or surrounded by friends, we are standing smack in the middle of God’s deep desire and crazy love for us!  God delights in us!

As His forgiven children, He finds no fault in you or me.  He only sees the opportunity for us to know Him more.

Living Worship Nepali Church

Pastor Habil Rasaily is a man on the move with a heart for God and passion for church building and planting.

I (& others at ROP )had the pleasure of meeting Pastor Habil at a special symposium for refugee pastors at the 2014 Unity Conference.

Not only does he pastor his church and minister to his congregation’s needs in the evenings, he works a full time job to pay the bills.

Yet, the call of Christ he has for church planting has led him to deepen his relationship with ROP.

His vision is to connect Nepali pastors and refugee churches to each other to help them stabilize in the U.S. and grow their congregations with new believers.

We are walking with him through the bureaucracy of starting a 501c3 ministry to reach this goal.  Please pray for us and God’s will.