The RIDE GR prayer ride crew of 2017, made up of leaders and members of five different churches, including 5th Reformed Church, Good News Gatherings, Pentecostals of Kentwood, Gold Avenue Church, and the SBR.
Imagine for a moment:
You've signed up for an hour slot at a 24-7 prayer room that your church or community that has committed to doing together for several days. You've signed up on the website and received a confirmation email for your time with a few instructions for how to get in when you arrive. You approach the different stations in the room and find yourself drawn to confess burdens you've been carrying in your heart to the Lord, and realize how heavy they have weighed on you. As the weight is lifted, you surprisingly feel compelled to pray for others in your family, your friends, coworkers, neighbors in your neighborhood, and even those you know who are doing mission in other countries. Even recent tragedies in the news, that made your heart so sad and helpless, begin to feel like opportunities for God to meet the broken in the most powerful of ways. All of a sudden, it is much easier to care---and hope. Through some strange grace, you have capacity to intercede and believe in the transforming power of the Gospel and the Presence of Jesus with you. You even begin to dream about how you and others in your church family can do something to serve and bless those who are in need around you. And this dreaming with friends continues in the coming days, weeks, and months...your church, and even the city, has become pregnant with possibility as the Lord continues to move.
1. Prayer is a powerful gift.
In our journey, we have found in the place of prayer is where our hearts and minds are re-oriented around the things on God's heart.
When we forget to make space and time to connect with the Father's Heart both individually and corporately, we so easily drift into a place of mere life management, complying with the desires of our flesh, or even pushing forward strategically without the wisdom or the heartbeat of the Spirit leading us.
Prayer is a gift to communities and individuals as it draws us outside of ourselves and into something much bigger, a place where the Presence of God is apparent---where He has our attention and can communicate His deep love to us without competing distractions. In prayer, the Father encounters us, reminds us of how we are loved by Him, and opens our hearts to love others around us with the love we have been given.
2. We Need Friendship.
As the Stockbridge Boiler Room community, God has given us a dream to see our city transformed and reconciled to the Father through His church (see our post What is the Church?). But we absolutely know this is not a dream for only us to pursue. This is a move the Spirit is making, letting us in on it with a whisper, and inviting us to play a small part of the orchestra He conducts. So first, we must prioritize keeping our ears to the heartbeat of God---and intercession for the city and its neighborhoods, with a listening posture, is something we cannot skip over. In Scripture and in church history, prayer always precedes mission movements, as well as sustains them. Second, we need the rest of God’s family, the church. We will need to invest time in fostering prayerful friendship and collaborating with other churches that are seeking the same goal. And on the front end, we need much more of the prayerful friendship piece than the collaboration. We all need our eyes opened wider to the precious value and purpose of one another in God’s church family, just as we are---and from there, with deep heart and mind agreement, loving and serving together as Jesus to see His Kingdom come on earth.
This is a word the Lord keeps Bringing to us this year: prayerful friendship.
We want to encourage prayer among the church of the city and sow into relationships to serve one another---and we have confidence that this is the starting place to see the lasting transformation we hope to see in our city.
3. A Gift to the Church of the City.
God has given us renewed desire to pursue prayerful friendship with other churches and communities in the city. One practical way He's has challenged us in this is to give away the DNA we carry in prayer as a gift to the church. We sense Him leading us to bless others by offering 24-7 prayer resourcing and coaching for churches/groups who are interested. We are also intentionally making ourselves available in these relationships with other churches to offer orientation training in healthy leadership discernment practice (based on the process outlined in Ruth Haley Barton's book Pursuing God's Will Together). For smaller groups, we've continued developing resources in Listening Prayer and Prayer Walking to make available as well, which are so foundational and transformative. We see the Church of Grand Rapids as GOD'S EXTENDED FAMILY in the city, and we want to foster deeper friendship within this family while offering this as a gift. The gift that we receive is the friendship of those we get to journey with. This extended family, this prayerful friendship bubbling into city transformation---this is the stuff of the Kingdom.
If the churches of our city are encountering the Lord in the place of prayer together, and living out life as communities on mission in the places God has put us, the city will be transformed by the Presence of Jesus in every corner of it, everyday.
:: tim ::