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Lord, What Have You Prepared For Us? We want to do the things that God wants us to do! We listen to His voice and then we come together to share what we're hearing from Him. We know that He is calling us to make disciples who make disciples - both at home and throughout the world. Becoming disciples isn't just about learning more head-knowledge, We must allow what we're learning to spill over into DOING effective service for our King. Adventures in Mission (AIM) is a short-term mission sending organization that gets this combination of developing people into disciples of Christ and involving them in effective service—both on the trip and in their lives at home. They teach a focus on five things:
These five things make a great focus for us as we strive to make disciples of Jesus Christ - knowing His Written Word and being engaged in effective service. Hearing God’s voice through listening prayer is the first on the list. How can we know the heart of God if we don’t hear His voice? God speaks to us through prayer, through His Written Word, through sermons, through books we read about Him, through others in our lives, and through circumstances. We need to test what we’re hearing from Him to be sure that He’s the one we’re hearing. Then we can act with great confidence! Meeting a felt-need is a plain response when we learn to hear God's voice. This is more than just "doing something!" We're looking for the real-life needs of those in our communities, and those in our lives. Then, we're prayerfully striving to DO SOMETHING that will help to meet that need. Building meaningful relationships is a necessary step to allow us to share our faith. It’s hard for us to speak into someone’s life if we don’t know them. Investing in developing a meaningful relationship is foundational to the ability to have a big impact on someone's life. Sharing our faith is a natural next step to meeting their felt needs and developing a meaningful relationship with them. Our desire to see them find spiritual truth flows from our desire to know them personally, and help meet physical needs. All of this must flow from our time in listening prayer. When we develop the discipline of debriefing and responding we're able to easily learn from our experiences and our mistakes. This flows nicely with our Core Value that says “Achieving God’s purposes means taking faith-filled risks. This always involves change.” We’re not where God wants us to be if we’re not willing to learn from the past and be in better line with His will in the future. Lord, show us what work you have prepared for us and how we can align with Your work so that we can hear Your voice, meet felt needs, develop relationships, share our faith, and do it better! AMEN! -PJ |
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James E. Bogoniewski, Jr. |