Prayer & Preparation for April 10th, 2022

This Lord's Day

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Hey church,

Let's pray the sermon text again this week in preparation for our hearing of it.

Since we who are fathers, though evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will you, our heavenly Father, give good things to your children when we ask! How much more will you give us the Spirit of your Son to come to us and among us this Lord's Day to speak peace to us! Please give to us, and to the lost that gather with us this week, the peace that's based on the reality that your dear Son was delivered up for our trespasses and raised up for our justification. Please give us peace with you through our Lord Jesus Christ, justifying us by faith.

Please grant us to hear your Word, since faith comes by hearing, and hearing by your Word, and open our minds to understand the Scriptures. Especially give us to know that it is as much your plan for us to take the Gospel to all peoples as it was your plan for Jesus to suffer and to rise from the dead. Please give to others the forgiveness of sins that comes in connection with repentance through our proclamation of that Gospel.

Please give to your servant your promised Spirit, clothing me with power as I preach. And then please clothe all your people with that same Holy Spirit power as we go with your Spirit and your commission and your message and your love for the world.

Here are some other details about the morning sermon and service that may inform your prayers and aid your preparation:

Songs:

"We Have Come to Join in Worship,"
"Hosanna (Praise Is Rising),"
"Christ Is Risen, He Is Risen Indeed,"
"O Church, Arise,"
and "Let Your Kingdom Come"

Sermon title:

"Their Minds Were Opened!"

Supporting texts:

Genesis 12:1-3; Luke 11:13; 24:1-35; Romans 4:25-5:1; John 14:1, 27; Acts 1:8

Relevant teaching:

"...genuine repentance is more fundamentally a matter of the heart's attitude toward sin than it is a mere change of behavior. Do we hate sin and war against it, or do we cherish it and defend it? One writer put this truth beautifully: 'The difference between an unconverted and a converted man is not that one has sins and the other has none; but that the ne takes part with his cherished sins against a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his hated sins.'"

 Greg Gilbert in "What Is the Gospel?", quoting William Arnot

"So it is possible to be...verbally fluent, theologically profound, biblically accurate and orthodox, and spiritually useless. That frightens me. I hope it frightens you, too.... It is very possible for us to be deeply concerned about [all of those things], but to know nothing of the life-giving power of God with the burning anointing of the Holy Spirit.... Alan Redpath used to say that the most penetrating question you could ask about any church situation [and perhaps also about any individual life] was, 'What is happening in this place that cannot be explained in merely human terms?'"

Eric Alexander

"The central problem of our age...the primary threat is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to the Lord's work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances around them"

Francis Schaeffer

By His Grace & For His Glory,

Jeff Tague