by: Justin Schaeffer

Today I wanted to share with you the devotional piece from our Men’s Morning Prayer this week. Pastor Steve always leads us through some scripture that related to prayer before we break up to pray. This week was especially poignant because it was a follow up to his sermon from this last Sunday.   At the end of his sermon last Sunday Pastor Steve shared with us from Luke when Jesus was teaching his disciples to pray.  Steve pointed out that Jesus was instructing us to ‘ask God for God’ and that the only way to truly experience God’s glory in a way that stirs your deepest passions towards Him is to ask, seek, and knock or to be persistent to the point of rudeness in our praying for him to give us the Holy Spirit.  Below is one of the verses Steve shared with us during our time this morning.

On “asking God for God” in the prayers of Paul — Ephesians

Ephesians 3:14-21
¹⁴For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. ²⁰Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, ²¹to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Below are the prayer requests we then prayed through

Response to Pastor Steve’s Sermon Las t Sunday

• Pray that our congregation would yearn to know and love God and His glory more than anything else including themselves and their own glory
• Pray that we would ask God for God and that we would persist in our asking to the point of rudeness.

Good Friday

• Pray for Rocket Minor as they practice and prepare to lead us in song as we respond to God’s glory manifested in His sacrifice on the cross.
• Pray for Justin Schaeffer, Cole Bratcher, and their volunteers as they nail down all the details for decorations, service flow, and schedules leading up to Good Friday
• Pray that the Holy Spirit would draw people and prepare them to be moved through meditation on Jesus’ death on their behalf.
• Pray for the Holy Spirit to bring those who don’t know Jesus and that they would come to desire relationship with Him more than anything based on what He did on their behalf.

Easter

• Pray that God would bring a ton of people to our campus packing out all three services in order that many who don’t know Jesus might hear the gospel.
• Pray that the majority of our visitors would need to hear the Gospel and that the Holy Spirit would use our service to grab their hearts and draw them into His family.
• Pray that the Baptisms would be a wonderful celebration of new life in Christ and a God glorifying demonstration of obedience to all. But pray especially for those God is going to specifically bring that Sunday to be moved to faith through hearing testimonies of His redeeming work in the lives of our Baptees and seeing their joyful obedience to him in Baptism.
• Pray for Pastor Mark as he prepares his sermon. Pray that the Holy Spirit would bring folks and prepare their hearts and guide his words to bring saving faith to many of the visitors attending our campus that day.
• Pray for a big response to the call to come forward for prayer after the Gospel is preached. Pray that some would accept Christ right their and would want to be baptized that morning.

Mercy Ministry

• Pray for our May 3^rd day of service.
• Many of the activities are currently up in the air and may be cancelled. Pray that we will have the exact opportunities to bless our community that God wants for us..
• Pray that some new opportunities we may have in Snohomish County might turn out to be a great way that we can bless our community and glorify God.
• Pray that our community would show overflowing love and mercy to those around them in response to God’s grace in their lives.