Week 13: Our Covenant with Christ to Pray for Centennial Covenant

January 24-30

More important than “our prayer requests,” says Neil Anderson, are “God’s prayer requests” – what he wants us to want, to seek, and to ask for. As I’ve told myself (and you!) many times, we are invited to pray with God – with Jesus and with the Spirit – not just to him, much less at him. That’s what it means to pray “in his name” and “according to his will” (John 14:13-14; 15:7-8; 1 John 5:14). And so this week, let’s continue to pray with Jesus, as John 17 shows him interceding for his original disciples and for us the night before his saving death.

After asking that the Father and he “be glorified,” here’s Jesus’ second request (verse 11): “protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.” The same plea is continued and expanded in verses 20-23:

I pray… that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Brother and sisters, pray this for our Centennial family this week, especially as we gather on Wednesday evening to open our hearts to one another. Jesus longs for us to be one – as he is in the Father and the Father is in him, and as we are in them – so that the world may believe. Pray that he fill us all with his Holy Spirit for the sake of his glory and desires. That is the best of all goods, and what makes any and every good truly “good!”

Week 12: Our Covenant With Christ to Pray for Centennial Covenant

January 17-23

Let's keep praying with Jesus according to John 17 – as he prayed for his disciples, and for us who would come to believe through their apostolic witness. This week, read and ponder verses 1-5, and 24. Then in praying, concentrate on what is first and last for Jesus: the glory of the Father and himself.

Does that seem like an infinitely inflated, self-absorbed ego? NO! It's simply and powerfully redemptive truth and love. God's glory is the perfection of his full being radiating into everything else -- what alone gives everything existence, meaning, purpose and joy.

The best we can want – for ourselves, families, church and world – is to want God to be glorified: i.e. to be more and more known, honored, and loved.  So friends, pray and never stop praying this with Jesus.

Nothing is more important for Centennial. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Week 11: Our Covenant With Christ to Pray for Centennial Covenant

January 10-16

Last Sunday morning, about 20 or so of us gathered to lift up Centennial Covenant for its new year of shared life and ministry. After a time of praise and thanksgiving, we let the praying of Jesus for his disciples (and us!) in John 17 guide our intercessions. My own prayers can get pretty shallow, narrow, anemic… and so downright boring and fruitless. Intentionally praying with Jesus – and so by his Spirit – deepens, heightens and broadens what we place before the Father... and opens paths into his fruit and joy.

For several weeks now, let’s immerse ourselves in this powerful praying of Jesus in John 17. This week, take in the whole chapter several times. Then let it take you into our Lord’s particular requests of the Father, and let them be our own – especially praying for our church family, ministries, relationships, and hearts. Let's pray with Jesus... 

• that he and the Father be glorified (1,5);
• that we know him, his finished work, and eternal life he gives (2-4);
• that we live in the world as sent by him, but not be of the world (11, 14-16); 
• that we be protected from the evil one (11-12, 15);
• that we be one and brought to complete unity (11, 21-23);
• that we have the full measure of his joy within us (13);
• that we be sanctified (made holy) by the truth of God’s word (17);
• that we be in the Father and him (21);
• that we see his glory and have his love in us (24-25).

Pray all this with Jesus for our church as a whole, but also the following:

• Our Congregational Meeting this Wednesday (11^th) where members will vote on nominees for Council and other offices, and also seek God’s wisdom on some serious concerns (that also will be considered at another meeting on Wednesday, January 25);
• Our Staff of Pastoral Team and Ministry Assistants, and our search for a new Pastor to Students;
• Our Ministry Teams;
• Our Adult Life Groups (including Men’s and Women’s), Equipping Classes, and mentoring relationships;
• Our Students and Children;
• Our Mission Partners.

In coming weeks, we’ll place more specific focus on these areas of our life together.

Weeks 9 & 10: Our Covenant With Christ to Pray for Centennial Covenant

December 27-January 9 (Note: this guide is for use over 2 weeks.)

Let’s use the next two weeks in our praying for Centennial to look back on 2011 and look ahead to 2012.  “My times are in your hands” is what we can pray with David (Psalm 31:15). “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8) is the great reality we can dwell in as we remember and reflect, as we anticipate and plan.

• What about the last 365 or so “yesterdays” for yourself and especially our church family? How do you see that time as “in God’s hands”? At a year’s end, I myself find it helpful to set aside time with God to do a review of events, blessings, disruptions, and connections – letting it stir thanksgiving, confession and lessons. 
• What about the next 365 or so days into “forever” for yourself and especially our church family? I’m not sure “resolutions” on their own get us very far. But what hopes and plans, desires and fears for 2012 would you submit to God, asking that his Spirit fill you and us together?

For both looking back on 2011 and ahead to 2012, take some time with the “Covenant with Christ for Centennial Covenant” that many of us entered in October. Here it is:

To glorify God by following Jesus on our shared journey of transformation in his mission to our broken world…

1. I will PURSUE GROWTH WITH CHRIST in my relationship with God as he reveals himself in his Word, gives himself in his Spirit, and draws me more into his love and life.
2. I will PRAY for Centennial Covenant at least weekly.
3. I will CONNECT regularly in at least one “face-to-face” group of 2-20 for our shared journeys and mission with Christ (e.g. mentoring relationship, Life Group, Equipping Class, Ministry Team), as well as our Sunday Worship Gatherings.
4. I will consider my daily WORK as God’s Calling – his opportunity to  grow me and bless others.
5. I will REACH OUT beyond Christ’s Body to at least one person or group through building relationships, prayer, serving, and witness. 
6. I will FINANCIALLY GIVE an off-the-top proportion of my income back to God and his work, including support for Centennial’s mission and ministries – growing toward or beyond 10% (“tithe”).    

Let’s ask God to use these specific dimensions of self-offering as a guiding light on our reflections and intercessions for our church and for ourselves. Our times are in his hands! And Jesus is the same -- yesterday and today and forever!

Week 8: Our Covenant With Christ to Pray for Centennial Covenant

December 20-26

This week, let’s especially pray for God to work in people’s hearts and lives through countless expressions of the Christmas story in carols, readings, prayers and reflections. The story is almost too familiar. And yet when Christ himself is lifted up, he draws people to himself (John 12:32).  His Spirit can break into mere traditions and sentiment with the solid promises of the Father to ignite genuine faith and hope for his peace and love. Pray it happen this week!

Ask the Holy Spirit for prompters to intercede fervently for specific celebrations this week – for example: particular family-times, including your own; and particular congregations in your neighborhood. Pray for our own Christmas Eve Candlelighting services on Saturday. Pray for those preparing, including Pastor David and that evening’s Worship Team, Darlene preparing a children’s story, and myself preparing a meditation. I know of people who were first awakened to the reality of the Good News and even came to faith during a Christmas Eve service.

Something I’ve been pondering for myself and those I love, including our Centennial family, is this: that one birth of one child that one night in a place called Bethlehem was the birth of a new creation and so re-birth into hope and peace for anyone anywhere who will receive it. As we’ve considered from Romans 8 in these Prayer Guides the last couple weeks, all creation is “groaning” in the “pains of childbirth.” Creation is “pregnant” with God’s promise to work his good for his purpose of liberating us as his children. How are we – as a church family” – “pregnant” with God’s promises for the future? In such hope, let’s continue to cry out for God to deliver what he wants born in us.

Week 7: Our Covenant With Christ to Pray for Centennial Covenant

December 13-19

This week, let’s stay with last week’s “prayers of longing” for ourselves and families, especially for Centennial Covenant. Mary experienced “labor pains” as little Jesus entered this world. In that, God himself was birthing our liberation for which Paul says all creation has been “groaning as in the pain of childbirth” (Romans 8:22). He says these are our groans too.

What do you see God giving in Christ that today you most long and even "groan" for us to receive, and trust has indeed been given?

And then how do we affirm God’s gifts for each of us and our fellowship against the destructive lies of the Evil One? Take in the strange but important version of the Christmas story in Revelation 12:1-12. Jesus was born into a fierce war. It’s a war of accusation against God’s children. It’s a war won by “the blood of the lamb,” with an overcoming of the adversary experienced through “the word of our testimony” that includes a surrender of our whole lives (vs. 11). Take some time to affirm Christ’s birth, death and resurrection, and claim it for our whole church family in thanksgiving, and then assert this good news against the accusations of Satan who tries to pull us down and apart.

Specific requests for Centennial this week:

• Continue to pray that the Holy Spirit empower expressions of the Good News through all churches, including ours, especially as preparations are made now for outreach opportunities on Christmas Eve.
• Continue to pray for our Church Council as they seek God’s wisdom on important issues.

Week 6: Our Covenant With Christ to Pray for Centennial Covenant

December 6-12

Have you been asked yet, “What do you want for Christmas?” Not just for Christmas, but for your whole life, have you been asked, “What do you want?” Have you heard Jesus ask you that, just as he did with a couple of curious men (John 1:38)?

What do you want for your heart and life? What do you most want for Centennial Covenant? Do you even know? And what do you think God wants for Centennial? And even if you’re not sure, do you want what he wants?

This week, let’s take in Romans 8:22-29 and its vivid picture of the “groans” of creation and our own hearts, and then its powerful promises of the Holy Spirit praying from within us with sighs too deep for words.

Do what many of us were guided to do in our Discovery Retreats with Tom Ashbrook: write a “prayer of longing.” It might be a simple list of phrases, or even a single representative image. Express your longings for God himself and what he wants to do – thinking of yourself as his child, and then of Centennial as his family. Ask the Holy Spirit to take you deeper beneath your longings into his – what he even now conveys to the Father through the Son from the core of our hearts which he indwells. Then pray with Mary: “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Specific requests for Centennial this week:

• For the Holy Spirit to empower this season’s expressions of the Good News through all churches, including ours, as pre-Christian people in the community attend various events such as our Musical/Drama from our Choirs this coming Sunday evening, and services such as Christmas Eve.
• For Dennis Anthony and Alex Nitolli beginning their ministries as Interim Youth Pastors, each working 20-25 hours/week.
• For our Church Council as they seek God’s wisdom on important issues.

Week 5: Our Covenant With Christ to Pray for Centennial Covenant

November 29-December 5

As we continue to lift up our church family and ministries, let’s keep asking God to show us what and how to pray in order to be pulled more and more into his holy desires. And then ask him to empower us for such Kingdom-seeking intercession that defuses the Evil One’s grip.

Listening for the Spirit’s guidance and praying out of Scripture, one of our members was led into three prayers for Centennial:

• That Christ be lifted up to draw us and others to himself (John 12:32);
• That we be “soil” that is soft and receptive to God and his Word, and not “rocky” and resistant (Matthew 13:1-23, especially 20-21). See also Hosea 10:12, and ask that any “unplowed ground” in us be tilled to reap the fruit of God’s righteousness and love.
• That we be “clay” in God’s potter hands, and not be like “shriveled leaves” blown away by the wind (Isaiah 64:1-8).

At least this week, let’s take in these places in Scripture, and let the Holy Spirit draw us into praise and trust, confession and repentance, surrender and request – first for ourselves, and then for Centennial’s leaders and members.

Specific requests for Centennial this week:

• Our “send-off” for the Stensgards Sunday evening, celebrating Randy’s ministry and praying for the whole family.
• Fresh awe and clear witness in this season of considering God’s divine Son becoming Mary’s baby boy.
• Mark Breen and his family in the news of his aggressive cancer, and Paul Sander and his family in their loss of Ruth.

Week 4: Our Covenant With Christ to Pray for Centennial Covenant

November 22-28

Thanks to the 65 or so folks who participated in our All-Church Prayer Gathering Sunday evening! There seemed to be a genuine spirit of humble repentance and confident hope as we echoed a King’s prayer with his threatened people, gathered to seek the Lord: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes on are you” (2 Chronicles 20:12). Let’s continue to open our hearts wide to our holy and gracious Lord for all he desires for our church family. And please try to join us again this coming Sunday at 6:30 pm for another prayer gathering.

This week as we prepare for our great feasts of Thanksgiving, let’s indeed set aside time to remember God’s gifts as evidence of his generous grace and then extend direct gratitude to him. The more we then choose to look to him as the Giver and the Gift, the more we’ll be drawn by his Spirit into sightings of his gifts, looking to him, expressions of thanks, and so on. Such an upward cycle of Giver, grace of gifts, and gratitude is a rather good alternative to the “vicious cycles” of striving, stressing, and grumbling that we easily spiral down into.

Thinking of the family of believers we are as Centennial Covenant, let’s pray with the Apostle Paul in Philippians 1:3-6, remembering the particular people with whom we share a “partnership in the gospel” and in whom God’s good work begun is being carried on to completion – even when it does not look like it. Ask the Holy Spirit to bring to mind these people and stir your gratitude. You might want to do this looking through our Church Directory.

Specific requests for Centennial this week

• Christ-exalting and Spirit-filled gatherings on Thanksgiving Eve, and then for Sunday evening’s time of corporate praise, confession, and intercession.
• Discernment for recommendation of Interim Youth Ministry Pastoral Leadership, starting Dec. 4, after Randy steps down.

Week 3: Our Covenant With Christ to Pray for Centennial Covenant

November 15-21

Maybe you’ve seen it on a bumper sticker: “Prayer changes things.”

It does not.

God does. And mainly he begins to changes people with a seed of faith that he can and will do what he knows is most needed. Such faith is not mere assent to a set of doctrines. It’s willing and enacted trust in the personal Father known in Jesus by his Spirit – out of broken hearts aware of their dependence and unworthiness. And such enacted trust starts with praying. Prayer is faith engaging directly with God… “abiding” as Jesus calls it (John 15).

But do we see that faith engaged in praying has no power in and of itself? It earns nothing. It accomplishes nothing. Too often I inadvertently place my faith in my own faith… or in my own praying. That’s like a dog chasing its own tail. I just get dizzy and sick.

Here’s the good news for everything in life, including praying. Jesus says “come to me.” It’s that simple. “When I am lifted up, I will draw all to myself” he promises (John 12:32). And when we don’t know what to say or how to pray, the Holy Spirit who knows our helplessness, prays from within us according to the will of God (Romans 8:26ff), and draws us into increasing faith and understanding, hope and assurance, love and strength.

Once again, let’s pray that we as a church family pray: not to earn or change anything ourselves, but to open ourselves with trust to our Advocate who is Head of his church and Lord of the cosmos. You might look back on the Scriptures and reflections that have guided us the last two weeks (which you can access on our Weekly Prayer Guides page). And then ponder and respond to this promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

On Sunday, one of our members sent a note to our Council of Elders that included this: “My prayer for us at Centennial Covenant Church is that we might experience a revival. Will you, individually, join me in this prayer?”

Will you? Even today?

Specific requests for Centennial this week:

• Wednesday evening Student Ministries Forum, especially for parents and volunteers, for dialogue and prayer about our transitions in this crucial area of our church family.
• Preparations for holiday opportunities – both as a church and as families – for celebration, outreach and honoring God.
• Review your "Covenant with Christ for Centennial Covenant" as a prompter for specific praying... for yourself and all of us.