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An Astonishing Message from a Gay Sister in Christ

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(You must make it to the third paragraph in order to understand.)

To the churches concerning homosexuals and lesbians:

Many of you believe that we do not exist within your walls, your schools, your neighborhoods. You believe that we are few and easily recognized. I tell you we are many. We are your teachers, doctors, accountants, high school athletes. We are all colors, shapes, sizes. We are single, married, mothers, fathers. We are your sons, your daughters, your nieces, your nephews, your grandchildren. We are in your Sunday School classes, pews, choirs, and pulpits. You choose not to see us out of ignorance or because it might upset your congregation. We ARE your congregation. We enter your doors weekly seeking guidance and some glimmer of hope that we can change. Like you, we have invited Jesus into our hearts. Like you, we want to be all that Christ wants us to be. Like you, we pray daily for guidance. Like you, we often fail.

When the word “homosexual” is mentioned in the church, we hold our breaths and sit in fear. Most often this word is followed with condemnation, laughter, hatred, or jokes. Rarely do we hear any words of hope. At least we recognize our sin. Does the church as a whole see theirs? Do you see the sin of pride, that you are better than or more acceptable to Jesus than we are? Have you been Christ-like in your relationships with us? Would you meet us at the well, or restaurant, for a cup of water, or coffee? Would you touch us even if we showed signs of leprosy, or aids? Would you call us down from our trees, as Christ did Zacchaeus, and invite yourself to be our guest? Would you allow us to sit at your table and break bread? Can you love us unconditionally and support us as Christ works in our lives, as He works in yours, to help us all to overcome?

To those of you who would change the church to accept the gay community and its lifestyle: you give us no hope at all. To those of us who know God’s word and will not dilute it to fit our desires, we ask you to read John’s letter to the church in Pergamum. “I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality. Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore!” You are willing to compromise the word of God to be politically correct. We are not deceived. If we accept your willingness to compromise, then we must also compromise. We must therefore accept your lying, your adultery, your lust, your idolatry, your addictions, YOUR sins. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

We do not ask for your acceptance of our sins any more than we accept yours. We simply ask for the same support, love, guidance, and most of all hope that is given to the rest of your congregation. We are your brothers and sisters in Christ. We are not what we shall be, but thank God, we are not what we were. Let us work together to see that we all arrive safely home.

A Sister in Christ

 

This post was originally posted here.

Doesn’t science disprove Christianity?

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There have been obvious conflicts between the scientific community and the religious community over certain points. Of course, the most notable dispute historically was the embarrassing episode of Galileo and the whole theory of whether the earth or the sun was the center of the solar system. We know that many bishops refused to even look at the evidence of a telescope because they had already baptized another scientific tradition that wasn’t biblical. This was a case, incidentally, in which the scientific community corrected theological interpretation and misinterpretation of Scripture because Scripture doesn’t teach that the earth is the center of the solar system, and it took the scientific community to correct us at that point.

To go further than that and to say that sometimes science corrects erroneous ideas is one thing, but actually to disprove Christianity . . . there are very few points of the Christian faith that are vulnerable to scientific attack. If a person says, “Well, we can scientifically prove that people can’t come back from the dead,” for example, and if science could prove that it’s impossible for the God of the universe to raise his Son from the dead, then obviously Christianity would be discredited and disproved. I don’t see how a scientist could even begin to approach that. All a scientist can do is to say that, under normal conditions and standard procedures, people who die stay dead. Of course, it doesn’t take a twentieth-century scientist to understand that; first-century people were well aware of the fact that when people died, they stayed dead. So unless the scientist could somehow disprove the existence of God or the resurrection of Christ, I don’t see how they could in any way actually falsify the claims of the Christian faith. Just because they’re not falsified doesn’t mean that they’re verified obviously. But I don’t see how we have anything to fear at that level.

The usual point of tension, however, has to do with the origin of the universe and the origin of life. If science proves that the world was not created, I think that would destroy the Christian faith. Christianity is committed to the concept of divine creation—that there is an eternal Creator before whom we are all responsible and by whom we were all created and that all that is made has been made through him and that the universe is not eternal. If the scientist could prove that the universe were in fact eternal, that would be the end of the Christian faith. But I don’t think we have the slightest need to worry about that.

 

This post was originally posted on Ligionier.org and can be found here.

Rob Bell, Homosexuality, and the New Cultural Acceptance

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BellSo the new thing today is to publicly support same-sex marriage. Hillary Clinton just did; Rob Bell just did.

Here’s what Bell was quoted as saying in the Huffington Post:

In response to a question regarding same-sex marriage, Bell said, “I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man. I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs — I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.”

Bell went on to say that while it used to be fair to equate evangelicals with social conservatism, that assumption no longer holds true. More pointedly, he said, “I think we are witnessing the death of a particular subculture that doesn’t work. I think there is a very narrow, politically intertwined, culturally ghettoized, Evangelical subculture that was told “we’re gonna change the thing” and they haven’t. And they actually have turned away lots of people. And i think that when you’re in a part of a subculture that is dying, you make a lot more noise because it’s very painful. You sort of die or you adapt. And if you adapt, it means you have to come face to face with some of the ways we’ve talked about God, which don’t actually shape people into more loving, compassionate people. And we have supported policies and ways of viewing the world that are actually destructive. And we’ve done it in the name of God and we need to repent.”

I’m sorry to hear this for the sake of Bell’s soul. I hope that he repents and turns to the truth.

With that said and meant, this shift is altogether unsurprising. The new mark of being culturally acceptable is affirming homosexuality as virtuous (not merely okay, but virtuous, even exemplary). This is the litmus test. I don’t think many of us expected that it would so quickly fill this role, but it has. The mark of being a progressive, kind, socially courageous person today is simply this: affirming same-sex marriage. There are other cardinal virtues of a contemporary au courant identity, but this is the lodestar, the one that hangs one’s personal moon.

This shows us that the cultural middle is indeed vanishing. The space where broad-minded people could hang out is rapidly disappearing. Either you are for same-sex marriage or not. If you’re not, and you’re a known commodity, you’re now behind the curve in a public, image-driven sense. Expect in coming days to see a veritable torrent of declarations of affirmation of SSM. Celebrities, news anchors, intellectuals, politicians, religious types, tycoons, and many more are heading to the pro-marriage exits. They’re going to be calling press conferences as quickly as they can. They’ll be getting into line with the value that drives the New Cultural Acceptance: affirming same-sex marriage.

We are witnessing in these very moments the propulsion of the New Civil Rights movement: the homosexual lobby. A decade ago–five years ago!–it seemed unthinkable that this issue would have vaulted into the cultural mainstream. But it has. Not only is affirming same-sex marriage part of our cultural conversation, though. It has become the moral pearl of great price. Public figures like Rob Portman, Bell, and Clinton–a strange assortment, admittedly–will deny prior statements, their own personal commitments (to marriage, that is), and the will of many of the people they serve or lead to be on the right side of history on this issue.

This has major implications for evangelicalism. A soft middle has developed as evangelicalism has become culturally popular. It’s very on trend in certain circles to occupy this space. Past generations have prayed, with Proverbs 30:8, “give me neither poverty nor riches.” Today’s generation modifies the prayer for our own situation. “Give me neither conservatism nor liberalism,” many evangelicals seem to have whispered. “Let me be an evangelical, but an inoffensive one.”

Perhaps you don’t want to breathe fire in public discourse. Whether you do or not, though, you’re going to be seen as very clearly on the wrong side of history if you continue to back marriage (and don’t affirm SSM). If you’re a pastor who has distanced himself from the Religious Right, and who regularly digs it in a pulpit aside or two, you’ve now got to go one better. To be truly progressive, truly open-minded, truly relevant, truly savvy in your cultural engagement, you need to now affirm same-sex marriage, with all that represents (the moral purity of homosexual acts, for example).

It will, to be sure, take time for this shift to shake itself out. But it’s here. What does this mean for people whose first love is not the culture, but God? It means that we really are behind the times now, and will be so in increasing measure. We’re backward. We’re mean. We hate people not like us. That’s how we will be interpreted. And make no mistake: this is not a quest for some rights and a piece of paper. We will, most assuredly, face the threat of losing our religious liberty.

How should we respond to all this? By being afraid and attacking those who oppose our biblical convictions? Not at all. We need to be like the Proverbs 31 woman. We need to laugh at the days to come (Prov. 31:25). Our hope is in Christ. He has already rescued us from the only peril that really matters, our condemned state (Rom. 4-5). We are set free from sin and hell and death. We have triumphed over the grave through vicarious participation in the resurrection of Christ.

What we must do now is gear up for persecution of varying kinds (per Matthew 5:1-11). And we must set our faces like a flint to speak the truth and to love our neighbor, including those who would silence us (Matt. 22:37-39). Do you see this? People are going to watch us. They’re going to see if we respond to those who call us bigots with hatred and anger. Will we lash out?

I believe that we won’t, many of us. We won’t budge a millimeter from the Word of God. We know that sin, in whatever form, only brings pain and destruction, and that the gospel, however demanding its call of transformation, only brings life and joy. So we will proclaim the truth without any fear or hedging. And we will love our neighbor to the utmost.

This is not a new problem. It’s a new face to an old problem. The church is being called to capitulate. Professing believers have done just that, with prominent examples coming to mind from the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. We know full well how this plays out. If we acquiesce to the culture, we will soon become a more religious version of the culture. On the other hand, if we stand fast in the power of God’s Spirit, we may lose some influence, some cache, some power. But we will honor the Lord.

We will show the coming generation that God’s people are not made out of sand, but solid rock.

No matter what we lose, we will glorify the Lord as in olden times. Perhaps our connection with Isaiah and Jeremiah and the Minor Prophets will no longer be expository, a matter for our devotions. Perhaps we will walk in their paths and experience their sorrows. If so, we know their God, and he will bear us through.

 

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Heart4Marriage Retreats 2013

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4Marriage logo outline

RETREATS IN A NUTSHELLScreen Shot 2012-08-28 at 3.21.21 PM

  • Intentional: Facilitated by a mentor couple (requirement: without all their ducks in a row, but looking to God to conform them to the image of Christ)
  • Focused: Plus two attending couples
  • Convenient: Scheduled various weekends (see Schedule: Spring/Summer 2013 retreats below)
  • Purpose: Strengthen marriages, deepen friendships, gain hope and vision
  • Locations: Selected from around the state at bed & breakfasts, lodges, cabins, etc.
  • Varied Schedule: One-day (begins with dinner Friday, ends with dinner Saturday); Two-day retreats (begins with dinner Friday, ends Sunday afternoon)
  • Scholarships: For up to half the cost
  • Fun: Includes unscheduled time on Saturday afternoon to enjoy the retreat locale
  • Ongoing: Resources such as books and websites to continue investment in your marriage

HOW TO BE A PART

First, check the Heritage website or app, or check posters or schedule cards to identify a date, mentor couple and location. Then contact the church office at 405-720-1449 or email Rocky Hails at rockin@delightinGod.org; costs and scholarships for each site will be sent to you. Last, let us know your selection and the mentor couple will contact you with details.

SPRING/SUMMER 2013 CURRICULUM

“In a man-centered view, we will maintain our marriage as long as our earthly comforts, desires, and expectations are met. In a God-centered view, we preserve our marriage because it brings glory to God and points a sinful world to a reconciling Creator.”

from Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas

ON RAMP: Glory of God & Commitment

Even with the proliferation of smartphones, GPS and other technical aids, for now, we are still dependent on road signs to get us to the destination. In marriage, God has provided us with road signs and gifted guides to help us see through the tangled limbs and around the corners of blind curves that speak of our busy lives.  In the Spring/Summer 2013 Heart4Marriage Retreats we will look at signs that cause us to consider the big picture of what directs and  defines our marriage. On this trip we will lean heavily on two such guys taking turns riding “shotgun” and helping alert us to the road ahead. These are Gary Thomas and material from his book, Sacred Marriage; and John Piper and his book This Momentary Marriage. Buckle up, adjust the mirror, turn off the radio, and let’s give full attention to the first signs up ahead.

ONE WAY: Love Despite Response 

Our first sign looks at the specific kind of love that a marriage of genuine fulfillment requires. You may be surprised that it is the kind of love that is probably different from what your marriage started with, but needs in order to finish well.

SCENIC OVERLOOK: Holy or Happy? 

Our next sign looks at a view of God’s purpose for marriage and the role that your spouse needs to be granted in order for you to thrive and flourish. Though expansive and truly “big picture,” this purpose has real practical beliefs and actions with which you can “hit the road,” rather than “hit the wall.”

LANE CHANGE: Forgive on Purpose 

Our fourth sign indicates a change, not so much in direction, but in alignment. We’ll travel the lanes of “when to forgive” and what this toll road requires. We’ll check our mirrors to see if we need to forbear an offense or change ourselves in conforming to Christ.

YIELD: Transforming Correction 

Just like learning to drive with attention to rushing, intersecting traffic, our marriage needs to develop the same recognition. Recognizing when to speed up, slow down, or give way to one another is a learned skill that requires training and power to do what’s needed. This weekend will point to ways to avoid the consequences of a “failure to yield.” When do we change and die to ourself, and when do we lovingly confront when our spouse is missing the mark.

 

Schedule: Spring/Summer 2013

  Date                   Mentor Couple    Location

April 12-13 Rich & Kathy Smith

Crow’s Rest/Tulsa

 

April 12-13 Gary & Peggy Winters

Lindley House/Duncan

 

April 12-13 David & Sandra Holmes

Tulsa

 

April 12-13 Mike & Leann McGee

Lindley House/Duncan

 

May 17-18 Dennis & Lisa McGee

Lindley House/Duncan

 

May 31-June 1 Eric & Ann Schrock

Location:TBA

 

June 7-9 Clyde & Linda Ross

Oak Ridge Cabins/Broken Bow

 

June 14-15 Don & Judy Dancy

Lindley House/Duncan

 

June 28-29 Benjie & Marsha Wechsler

Lindley House/Duncan

 

Partial scholarships are available. Retreats vary as 1 or 2 nights. Contact church office for more info and updates at (405) 720-1449 or Rocky at rockin@delightinGod.org.

 

Thoughts on Sunday’s Message – Binary Solution Set

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Binary Solution Set

Have you ever heard that phrase?  If you hang around mathematicians, or computer programmers, or some types of engineers, you may have encountered it.  It’s a phrase that describes a problem with two—and only two—answers.  Typically those answers are expressed as either “Yes/No” or “On/Off.”  A binary solution set problem, whatever it is, is very clear cut, and the response is very black and white, so to speak.

 

What does that have to do with church, you ask?  Well, Pastor Marty’s sermons on evangelism bring up a true binary solution set problem.

 

Response to the gospel message is a binary solution set.  You either say “Yes” to the invitation to know Christ as Savior, or you say “No.”

 

To be perfectly clear and perfectly blunt, any answer that is not “Yes” to Jesus is “No.”

 

“I’m not sure,” is really “No.”

 

“I’m not ready,” is really “No.”

 

“I need to think about it,” is really “No.”

 

“I need clean up my life first,” is really “No.”

 

“Not right now,” is really “No.”

 

Our culture doesn’t like that.  Our culture has grown so inclusive and so pantheistic that we want to believe that “All roads lead to Rome” works for religion, too.  At the same time, our culture wants to believe that salvation is at least to some extent a meritocracy, that we will enter heaven because we in some manner deserve it.

 

Unfortunately, the Bible tells us that is not the case.

 

“For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”

Luke 9:26

 

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead…

2 Timothy 4:1a

 

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds… And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Revelation 20:11-12, 15

 

So our eternal destiny is actually determined by our response to the binary solution set question of “Do you have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ?

 

An answer of “Yes” enrolls our names in the Lamb’s Book of Life, which in turn places us in God’s Presence for eternity.

 

Any other answer, no matter how rational or reasonable to our human ears and minds, is “No,” and means our names are not present in that Book.  And if we die in that state, they will never be in that Book, which will mean we will spend eternity separated from God.

 

To all those who believe in Purgatory or reincarnation, I’m sorry, you’re wrong.  The Bible does not allow for either of those.  There are no reruns, retries, do overs, or second chances.  Our final answer to the question when we die is our final answer for all eternity.

 

The best thing we can do for our families, friends, and neighbors is present them with this binary solution set question, make it clear to them what their choices really are, and make it clear to them what the true results of those choices will be.

 

To do less is disobedience to God and Christ.  To do less is to fail our families, friends, and neighbors.

 

Thoughts on the Cross

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It’s Sunday afternoon, March 10, 2013.  Pastor Marty preached an excellent sermon this morning in his series addressing what evangelism is and is not, and what evangelism should mean to the church.  This morning, he had occasion to refer to the following passage of scripture:

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.  Luke 9:23-24 (NASB)

I’m a writer—from time to time I’ll even go so far as to call myself a wordsmith—so it’s very easy for me to get focused on a word and mull it over and chase it down odd paths of thought.  That happened to me this morning with the word ‘cross’.  While Pastor Marty had me engaged with the sermon, the back of my mind kept teasing this word ‘cross’ and its context in this verse.  And in a few minutes I arrived at the following thoughts.

One of the things we have to be very careful about in reading scripture today is to not read context into a verse that isn’t there.  This verse is a place where it’s very easy to do that, and it all deals with that word ‘cross.’

You see, for almost 2000 years ‘cross’ has been associated with the central truth of the Christian faith and gospel.  It was a cross upon which Jesus Christ, Messiah of God, was executed in the beginning of the only act of redemption by which people can receive salvation and eternal life.  There have been almost 2000 years of respect and awe and at times veneration visited upon the cross because of this.

As a consequence, it’s very difficult for us as believers and members of our culture to read the word ‘cross’ in scripture and not burden it with 2000 years of awe and glory and reverence.  Sometimes that’s okay; there are some verses where it is appropriate for that to be part of our reading and interpretation of the word ‘cross.’

In other verses, not so much.  And this is one of the times where we shouldn’t do it.

Jesus is speaking here to people who had gathered around him.  Remember that at this point in time the Crucifixion of Jesus has not occurred.  That event is in the future when this account happens.  Therefore, the whole weight of glory and reverence that we today associate to and with the cross of Jesus did not exist in the minds of His hearers.  It’s important to know that.  That was not part of their social or religious culture.  It was not part of the context of this conversation, and if we really want to understand what Jesus was saying, it should not be part of our interpretation of this verse.

Crucifixion at that time was (and for that matter still is) a particularly barbaric form of execution comprised of equal parts of death by torture and death by exposure.  It was part of Roman law that a Roman citizen could not be crucified.  It was reserved for the worst sorts of criminals and enemies.  It is a matter of history that when the slave rebellion led by Spartacus was eventually crushed, the Romans crucified thousands of the captured rebels along the highways of Italy.

There was nothing elegant or glorious or awesome about crucifixion in the minds of those who heard this statement when Jesus said it.  It was strictly associated with cruelty and sordid deaths.  Jesus was not giving His hearers something to aspire to; He was giving them a very graphic warning about what life could hold for those who followed Him.

If Jesus were speaking today to a crowd in America, He might have worded the statement this way:

  • Take up his electric chair daily and follow me

Or maybe this way:

  • Take up his gas chamber daily and follow me

Or this way:

  • Take up his gallows daily and follow me

Maybe this way:

  • Take up his executioner’s drug syringe daily and follow me

Or even this way:

  • Take up his lynch mob’s noose daily and follow me

Do you get the point?  There is no promise of an easy comfortable life if we follow Jesus.  In fact, in another place Jesus said this:

“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.  Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you…”  John 15:18-20a (NASB)

So if we are truly being the church—if we are truly being disciples of Christ and not just professing that we are—it should not surprise us if we face (sometimes violent) personal opposition.

Soli Deo Gloria.

David

 

February 28 Prayer Guide

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When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them...”  Matt 14:14

When Jesus looked at people, He saw them in their neediness and felt compassion for them. LORD, help us to see the individuals around us and fill us with Your compassion for them.

February 27 Prayer Guide

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For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.”  2 Tim 1:7

Pray that fear would not keep us from sharing the Gospel with others regularly, but that we would eagerly share because of His power and love in us.

 

February 26 Prayer Guide

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 “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.”  Romans 10:1

LORD, fill us with the desire to see others come to salvation. May we not live insulated in our own little world, but aware and connecting with the lost around us.

February 23 Prayer Guide

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 “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.Matt 9:37

LORD, open our eyes to see the harvest of lost people around us. May we be your vessel to share the Gospel with them.

 

February 22 Prayer Guide

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 “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain…”  John 15:16

May we recognize God’s choosing of each of us to go and bear fruit in the lives of those around us.

 

February 21 Prayer Guide

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 “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.1 John 4:20,21

Pray that we will understand and live out God’s love for others as an expression of our love for God.

February 20 Prayer Guide

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We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19

Love is a verb. Pray that we would be vessels for God’s love to saturate us and overflow through our lives to others, that they may know Him and His love.

February 19 Prayer Guide

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 “…let us love one another, for love comes from God…Whoever who does not love does not know God…This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins…. Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”  1 John 4:7-11

Pray that we would learn to love one another as God loves us.

February 18 Prayer Guide

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“ …rather serve one another in love…’Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Gal 5:13,14

Pray that we would truly be about God’s ministry-loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

 

February 17 Prayer Guide

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For Christ’s love compels us…And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”  2 Cor 5:14,15

We were made to live for things bigger than ourselves.  Pray that we would live outside our world of SELF.

February 15 Prayer Guide

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“The god of age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”  2 Cor 4:4.

Pray that we would not be blind to spiritual truths.