Prayer for 2014

myprayer

Getting ready for the new year, I sent this email to our church this week. I thought it would be good here.

We have a cat.  She is sitting on my desk staring at me right now as I type this email. The moment I sit back in my chair, she will climb right over into my lap to soak up some of my body heat. No matter how many times I put her back down on the floor, she jumps right back up into her desk position, waiting for the next opening so she can move right back into my lap. That’s what she does. She’s a cat. That’s what cats do. It is in her nature.

As a Christian, it is my nature to pray for my brothers and sisters, to love unconditionally, to respond to mistreatment with forgiveness. That is who Christ is, and since I have died to myself, He lives in me and changes my nature.

Or does he?

Sometimes, I am amazed at what naturally flows out of me when difficulties, frustrations, and roadblocks arise.  In fact, sometimes it seems like the smallest little issue causes the worst attitudes to come out of me. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to love the person who hurts me. I struggle with control of my tongue. I fight hard to resist various types to sin that encroach into my life. Sometimes I experience victory… Other times I feel very defeated. My old nature wins way too often, and I don’t fully experience the new nature that Christ died to give me.

Can you relate at all?  Or is it just me?

My prayer for us in the new year is that we would truly experience the transformational work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God- truly righteous and holy.
Ephesians 4:23-24

It is easy for us to just go about our life, mixing victory and defeat.  We get really used to it.  We even give up, content to settle, thinking that “this is just the way it is for me.”  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  I believe that once we truly experience the new nature that He works into us, we will see our lives change, our church grow, and we will bear much fruit as a result!

For 2014, I am praying that The Orchard Church will experience God in a whole new way, that we will truly live the NEW life that he has bought for us, and that we become a radical agent of transformation in lives all around us.

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice-the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
Romans 12:1-2