Prayer #3: Passionate Followers

The prayer is for those who understand prayer #1 and they're buying in no matter what the cost is. That there would be those that would passionately and ferociously do everything that they can to follow hard after their savior Jesus and methodically dissect every single shred of sin that detracts from Him. My prayer is that we find a generation of believers that passionately disciple because they take their command to equip the next generation seriously. My prayer is that we have people who want to constantly grow in their knowledge of their King and learn whatever they can so that they might experience Him as well as teach about Him. My prayer is that we have those who never settle for passionless indifference or morally neat "christians"...I know that there are too many people who continue to claim the title of "christian" and yet have no deep passion to follow after their Christ on a second-to-second basis. Too few want to put in the effort of being discipled by the one they follow. Too many drop out because of a gallion of excuses. Some get blind-sided into what they "signed up for."

Where are you, O passionate follower?

May God send us those who would seek Him with all their heart, mind and soul. Those are the ones we're looking for...that is our prayer. Who wants in?

Prayer #2: Gospel-centered community

The vision was that there'd be a day when we'd come into church will expectancy. So like we would come in and expect to really be changed by hearing and living out Gospel truths. We would want to learn and we'd come and ask questions together. The hope was also that we would be a bunch of people who really understood who we were and who we were not. That we didn't judge other people because they weren't like us, but rather told every, "hey...there's room at the cross." It would be a place where nobody would feel left out because of either age, gender, personality, grade, or sinfulness. My prayer is that we finally be a people who would go, "Hey look...this is me, and this is my past, and this is what i'm struggling with now...and i desperately need Jesus to heal me of this and i desperately need you to walk with me on this. I know Jesus is better than what i'm settling for right now and i don't know why i'm stuck in this...help me."

The vision was also about a people that would always be concerned for each other - calling/texting/meeting up because they want to "do life" with each other. They would eat together frequently and talk about what Jesus is doing in their life. My prayer is that we would move way way beyond just "attending church." So that's the prayer...that Gospel might be at the center of us doing life together - young & old, all levels of education, all places of life, from all over the place...that we might laugh and cry and correct and party hard together as we are being transformed by Jesus.

Atheism & Meaningful Life

The following Q&A is taken directly from the atheist-community.org website. Thoughts?

Q: Don't atheists have basically empty, meaningless lives, when they don't believe that there is any higher power out there?

A: Nope. We don't think that the world is an empty, meaningless place, even though we don't think a god designed it. We think the world is a fascinating, wonderful, interesting place, and we enjoy living in it. Now, you may think that it's impossible to "really" enjoy this world without believing of God as the designer. We don't feel that way.

Suppose you are walking in a beautiful garden with a friend, and your friend says, "I heard there are fairies living in this garden!" You tell your friend that you don't see any fairies, and you don't see any particular reason to believe that these fairies are there. You are just enjoying the garden. But your friend insists: "How can you enjoy this place if you don't believe in fairies?"

Unless you're a little kid, you would probably feel that your friend missed the point. Here you are, enjoying a nice day and great scenery, and your friend is trying to convince you to stop enjoying the garden the way it really is. He is telling you that you have to make something up, which isn't real as far as you can see, or else you don't have as much of an appreciation of the garden as he does.

In fact it is probably the other way around. It's a fine thing to have an imagination, but it seems like your friend is cheapening the experience, because he can't just enjoy something beautiful for its own sake.

The world has a lot of things to enjoy in it. Food, music, a well-told story, romance, sex, physical activity, the outdoors, the feeling of solving a difficult puzzle... just to name a few. These are things that most people enjoy on a day-to-day basis. And we don't appreciate the world around us any less for not thinking that those things come from God.

Also, it's not like there are no mysterious unknowns or "greater forces" right here in the physical universe. Most likely we will never know everything there is to know about this vast universe or our past. Who really understands quantum mechanics? Are there parallel universes out there? Are they accessible to us? Is time travel possible? Can we find a better way to generate our own energy before our sun burns out billions of years from now? These are all very big mysteries. One of life's great pleasures is applying your mind to solving hard questions like these. Learning is fun. Knowledge is fun. So it seems likely that we will never run out of things to enjoy in that sense.

You may have plenty of good reasons for believing in God, but if you think it's bad to be an atheist because atheists lead a cold, barren, loveless, uninteresting life, you are really kidding yourself.

http://www.atheist-community.org/faq/#empty_lives

Prayer #1: The Gospel

Understanding the Gospel & its implications: may we finally get to the place where we understand what the gospel is and be changed by it. Either we don't teach it or we assume that people know it...but either way, we have neglected its understanding and its power. My prayer is that we don't confuse "being religious" with "being saved" and nothing that we do - our morality, church attendance, a prayer of repetition, or religious fervor saves us. We are saved because God, in his grace and love, sent His Son to be our propitiation and by Him and through Him we can now live the life most fulfilling and satisfying. He loves us...exactly as we are (without us "trying harder"). So then, may we live in light of this glorious reality and proclaim it with our words and life.

A compilation of prayers

Finishing up seminary and watching different youth ministries most of my life, i had so much angst and desire to see what God would do through me to change the lives of youth. Like I remember times during undergrad and at seminary when i would go, "this is what i would like the youth group to look like...this is what i would want for the youth" and at those moments, God would just gently tell me "just wait...you'll get your chance soon enough" And now that i'm here, i constantly find myself going back to the same prayers and hopes for these youth. The following entries will be a compilation of my prayers...