How to Pray for Fellow Workers (SBC Call to Prayer)

Text: Colossians 1:9-14

Today is a day when we are joining together with countless other Southern Baptist churches in many different locations to answer a call to prayer. Specifically, the call to prayer is designed to ask for a spiritual awakening at every level, from the intimacy of our friends and family to the fellowship and missions work of our church and denomination and on to the furthest reaches the world. Proverbs 15:29 says, “The Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous.” And as James 5:16 reminds us in the venerable King James Version, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

There is no need to explain why we need to be in fervent prayer for spiritual awakening in our land and around the world. The news media online, on the television, and in print in newspapers and magazines does a fine job of articulating the darkness and spiritual malaise of the world in which we live.

 

Imagineering: Discipling the Evangelized

Text: Colossians 1:9-12, 21-23

Last week we talked about the importance of evangelism in the life of the church. Evangelism is where Christian ministry must start. For, as we heard from Romans 10, “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?”[1] The first task in making disciples, as we were commanded by Jesus to do in some of his last words to the disciples before His ascension, the first task is to get sinners to repent, turn away from their sin, and commit to living a godly life. That is the task of evangelism. And without that work, there can be nothing else done. No worship. No teaching. No sending. No praying. For who would do these things to or for a God in whom they do not believe?