When God's Spirit Leads Us
Proverbs 1:20-23
20 Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
she raises her voice in the public square;
21 on top of the wall she cries out,
at the city gate she makes her speech:
22 “How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
23 Repent at my rebuke!
Then I will pour out my thoughts to you,
I will make known to you my teachings.
Video for this service can be viewed @ Sunday, July 31, 2022
NewDay... We are in the last few days of our 30 Day Prayer Challenge.
How has your time with Jesus been giving you renewed strength and hope?
I want to invite you to come to our Sunday, August 7, worship service at 9 am at Taco Jed.
This is going to be a very important time for our NewDay church community as we pray over our leaders, our staff, and our future direction. This will also be a time we be sharing where we see God leading us at this point. On Tuesday, August 9, the NewDay Leadership Team will be engaged in finalizing our fall plans and we want to surround them with prayer and encouragement.
I am thankful that we had already begun the process of envisioning what God might have for us in the future. Last September, a group of leaders from our NewDay Church community spent a weekend with a consultant who helped us process how God might be leading us in this next stage of ministry together. We identified four key values that are part of our DNA. These are:
NewDay Envisioning Our Ministry Values
1. We are a community that has a passion to serve others.
2. We are a community that longs for deeper life relationships with God and others.
3. We are passionate about investing in children, youth, and families.
4. We are a people who have a desire to be led by and experience the power of the Holy Spirit in everyday life.
We are continuing to seek Jesus wisdom and direction so we might most honor Him and see lives transformed by his presence.
I’d like you to reflect on this excerpt of what I’ve been reading from Jim Cymbala’s book, Fresh Faith: What Happens When Real Faith Ignites God's People:
Many times in life, God waits while a situation goes from bad to worse. He appears to let it slip over the edge, so that you and I say, “There's no way now for this ever to work out.” But that is the point when the omnipotent God intervenes in our hopelessness and says, "Oh, really? Watch this...!
Satan wants us to focus on the problem, not the Provider. He constantly points to what seems to be rather than to what God has promised to do. If we stop spending time with the Lord in prayer, the concerns of the physical world snatch our attention and dominate us, while the spiritual senses deaden and the promises fade.
I am absolutely convinced that the number one reason that Christians today don't pray more is because we do not grasp the connection between prayer and the promises of God. We are trying as individuals and churches to pray 'because we're supposed to' without a living faith in the promises of God concerning prayer. No faith life of any significance can be maintained by this 'ought-to' approach. There must be faith in God at the bottom… When real faith in God arises, a certainty comes that when we call, he will answer...that when we ask, we will receive...that when we knock, the door will be opened...”
God knew what he was doing from the very beginning.
He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.
Romans 8:29 (MSG)
Grateful for you,
Pastor John