Starting this week our Encouragement Team is trying to bring our congregation together to have us all praying for the blessing of the Lord upon our building project.
One of their ideas was to assemble a team of Prayer Warriors who would pray every day for successfully completing the project. One of our members, Karen Bennett, a real prayer warrior herself, agreed to head up this team.
One idea was to include a prayer each week in the worship folder that people could cut out and put in their Bible or devotional booklet or wherever and then pray every day.
A wonderful thing happened. In my closing announcements I urged the congregation to take home the worship folder so that the prayer would be available to them. And that's what people did!
After the service one of the ushers came up to me and said, "Pastor, we had over 200 in attendance in the first service. They all took their bulletins home. Now, we don't have enough bulletins available for the 2nd service!"
Wow! It was so cool that people caught the vision of what we are trying to accomplish. It has been a really good feeling to know that so many people are praying together for our building project.
Here is the prayer:
Heavenly Father, we come before You today to ask Your continued blessing on our church. Please be with us and guide us in every aspect of our being here. We are here to worship You and to fellowship with one another in Your holy name. We will soon begin construction on our new building after much prayer and discussion on the subject. We ask Your continued blessing on our efforts, as they will be many groups within Life in Christ that will use the building for meetings, classes, and other activities for our own congregation and as a community outreach to share Christ with a needy world.
Father, if it be Your will, please let construction run smoothly and safely. Keep us from encountering problems along the way, and may there be no disputes among us as we move on. The building is for Your great glory, Lord. Help us to keep that in the forefront of our minds throughout its construction. Please grant us wisdom on this path to honor You and each other in the process. Let's never forget the purpose of this building is to spread the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to strengthen it in the minds of our members and present a clear joy to all visitors, especially those who have not known Jesus before!
Holy Spirit, rain down Your blessing on our mission, that we may be instruments of Your Word. We ask these things in the name of Jesus, our beautiful Savior! Amen.
