Reading for Discipleship: Understanding Prescriptive and Descriptive Passages of Scripture11/7/2024  When I think about the types of verses that I’ve been encouraged to memorize throughout my life, they have tended to be verses that record the teaching or commands of Jesus or Peter or Paul. Perhaps that has been your experience as well, but what I have not spent a lot of time memorizing are the narrative stories of the gospels or the book of Acts; the story of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well, the healing of blind Bartimaeus, the story of Paul’s time in Philipi or Thessalonica or Ephesus. One type of passage focuses on the teaching and commands while the latter is simply telling the story, narrating what certain people empowered by the Holy Spirit actually did. This, I have come to learn, is the difference between those passages that are prescriptive and those that are descriptive. There is an important distinction here and I’m increasingly convinced that, as disciples of Jesus, we should sharpen our skills at noticing the descriptive passages to help us better understand how to live out and obey the prescriptive ones. An example of a prescriptive passage is the great commission, “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). In this passage, Jesus is prescribing a way of living. He’s asking us to obey him and do the things he commands in this passage. It’s a clear call to make disciples - Jesus is telling us to do this thing. It is a prescriptive passage. But, what does it mean to make disciples? And how do we go about baptizing them? And teaching new disciples to obey everything Jesus commanded - what does that mean and how do we do it? While His command is clear, when it comes to what we do on Monday morning to obey it, most in the church today have little idea. We tend to fall back on the one action we know to take - invite them to church. That is a good idea but, is that what Jesus meant when he told all disciples to make disciples? Invite them to church and hope that a thirty minute sermon will be adequate to invite them into a life of apprenticeship to Jesus? I think He might have had more in mind. This is where the descriptive passages in scripture are helpful. In answering the questions above, the book of Acts gives us a front row seat to watch the first Christians make disciples. The twelve, the seventy two and many more had spent three years apprenticing to Jesus as he taught and ministered in front of them and with them and we can watch how they make disciples throughout the pages of Acts. They not only heard the great commission but they had also watched Jesus do it. Because of this I think we can assume that they had a fairly clear idea of what Jesus was expecting of them and so as we watch their lives, we’ll see real time examples of what Jesus meant when he gave the great commission. The description of their lives and actions fill in the blanks of our understanding. Do descriptive passages hold the same weight as the prescriptive ones? No. Prescriptive passages tell us truth about God and share the commands of Scripture. The Bible is clear that Jesus expects us to obey his commands. With descriptive passages however, we simply get a front row seat to watching the first disciples live out those truths and obey the commands in their particular time and context. It is important to understand that their time and context was different than ours. Jesus healed in all kinds of interesting ways. In the gospels we can see examples of him healing others - with a word, with a touch or embrace, by spitting and making mud or sticking his fingers in a person’s ears. These are descriptive passages but I don’t think anyone would say that in order to heal a person we need to spit and make mud. If the Holy Spirit leads us to do such a thing, we sure should but while the Bible does call us to pray for healing, how we do that might not matter so much. There are many examples from the church in Acts that don’t make a lot of sense for Christians living in the modern world and many more that aren’t the only way to do a thing. While the examples in scripture don’t hold the same weight as the clear teachings of scripture, it is vitally important that we regularly hold our methods and ideas up the mirror of scripture and think reflectively why we do one thing when the Apostles and first Chrsitians did things so differently. As an example, Jesus’ command his disciples (that includes us) to baptize new believers. The example in the book of Acts is of immediate baptism. The longest time between conversion and baptism that I can find is the Apostle Paul who waited in blind darkness for three days before Ananias arrived. In my modern day church experiences, baptism is often put off for months and even years as we wait for the new believer to go through some sort of class so that we, the older more mature Christians, can make sure they are ready. Is it wrong to baptize in our way? I don’t think so but this is why the descriptive passages can be so helpful. They cause us to look at our traditions, the way we do things, and compare them to what those closest to Jesus did. And in this case, it causes me to question why we deviated from the pattern of the Apostles. Are we somehow smarter than Paul and Peter? Do we have some insight that they did not? The fruit of mature disciples seems more abundant in their time than it does in our modern western churches. Food for thought I guess. Another example is how churches come into being in the book of Acts. I hesitate to use the word “planted” because I’m not sure we can find enough evidence that Paul’s goal was to plant churches and his methods are so apples to oranges different than our modern approach, that the phrase “church planting” ends up being a distraction. To be sure, Jesus intends the church - the gathered body of believers in any one location - to be his outpost in a broken world. He will build his church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. But as we follow Paul, in particular, through the second half of Acts, his method seems to be focused on making disciples, baptizing them and teaching them to obey the commands of Jesus and then, the church always emerges. But in another mind blowing observation, these churches are immediately led by the brand new believers in each city. Nobody plants churches like this in North America. We generally tend to transplant a group of mature believers with a sizable budget into a new location where the outsiders will lead for the foreseeable future. Is this wrong? Again, I don’t thinks so. It’s just another way to do it. But it is not the example of Paul which should cause us again to wrestle with our assumptions and beliefs about church planting. We often talk about Paul being the most prolific missionary and church planter in history so it is curious why we’ve so readily disregarded his example? So while the descriptive passages help us understand and apply the prescriptive ones, they also have a way of causing us to reflect on our own assumptions about ministry. But we cannot give them the same weight of authority. To do that would require us to walk everywhere we go and to write letters to communicate with other believers because that is how Jesus and Paul did it. That would be legalistic folly. It could however be a good idea to add a new bracelet next to our W.W.J.D bracelets, W.D.J.D - What DID Jesus do? Going back to Paul’s church planting method, he seems to have adopted the W.D.J.D model, looking at the example of how Jesus did ministry and then copying it almost to a T. In Luke 10, Jesus sends out the 72 into new regions which he had not yet entered. They were to enter the city or town, proclaim the kingdom and then, if a person invited them into their home, they were to stay with that person. This is exactly what we see Paul doing in Philippi - proclaim the kingdom down by the river, stay with Lydia - and in Thessalonica - enter the city (the synagogue), stay with Jason. If you study Luke 10 and then follow Paul’s missionary journeys, you’ll see that he is following the example of Jesus. For Paul it seems, if it was the way Jesus did it, he would do it too. I hope that as you immerse yourselves in scripture you will become more aware of how the descriptive examples of Jesus and the first church help fill in the gaps of the more prescriptive passages. It has certainly challenged me to grow in my ability to recognize what it is that I do that is built more on modern ideas from business or psychology or pop culture. It’s a hard challenge but a good one and leads me to prayerfully begin realigning my beliefs and behaviors with the teaching and example of scripture. If you found this article helpful, please share it with your friends.
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I long ago noticed that Bezalel and Oholiab are, as artisan creatives, the first people in the Bible to be ‘filled with the Spirit of God’ (Exodus 31:3) but I recently found, three chapters later, that they were also given the ability to teach others. The work seems to have been too big for them to accomplish alone - they are going to need to train others, to bring on apprentices who can join them at the craftsman’s table. The creation of the tabernacle and all of its components was God sized work and thus required a God sized workforce. This would only come about through the multiplication of workers and so God saw fit to give Bezalel and Oholiab the ability to teach and train others. I wonder how Adam and Eve felt when God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:28). I’ve read that passage most of my life without really feeling the gravity of the God sized job that had been given to the first couple. I can wrap my mind around being fruitful and increasing in number, but fill the earth? Subdue it? I struggle to keep my lawn mowed but the whole earth? This is a God sized job! It could only be accomplished if the workers are multiplied and trained. And God seems focused on multiplication in Genesis 1:
Fruit seed is exponentially powerful. It is by nature multiplicative. An entire apple orchard lies hidden in the flesh of a single apple. Wheat to feed the nations is contained in a single wheat kernel. Multiplication is built into the very fabric of the cosmos - it is the way God created things. It is the pattern in nature and an intended pattern in the church as well. Creatives like Bezalel and Oholiab were given the ability to teach others and to multiply their gifts. Jesus told his disciples to go and make disciples, to teach them to obey his teachings. He chose 12 good seeds knowing that as they do what he did, they will multiply (Matthew 28:18-20). Paul tells Timothy to take the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others (2 Timothy 2:2). And Christ gives the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers and pastors to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-13). Jesus tells us that He will build his church (Matthew 16:18) but we are to make disciples: to teach, to equip, to train, to entrust, to build up, to mentor, – to multiply. Disciple making at every level of the church would seem to be the Jesus method. Are you the pastor? Who are you training and teaching to do your job? Are you a Sunday school teacher? Who are you inviting in alongside you to equip and prepare? Are you a brand new believer? Who are you entrusting with the things you are learning? You don’t need to be a theologian, just obedient to teach someone the last new thing you learned about following the Lord. God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and increase in number, to fill the earth and subdue it. Think about your town or city, your neighborhood or country - think about the unreached world, over 3 billion people who have no real access to the gospel. There are all kinds of good things we can do as Christians but making disciples is perhaps the most clear command we’ve received from Jesus and it is a principle found in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. If God called two artists to teach others to do the thing He had called them to do, He’s calling you as well. Let’s multiply. Let’s make disciples. Not just the professionals but all of us. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends.  Remember Covid? Pastors and churches across the country stepped into uncharted territory those first weeks of March and April in 2020. I prayed daily for my pastor friends and can only imagine the levels of stress that piled up around them as they led their respective churches through the Coronavirus crisis. With Sunday morning services needing to be cancelled, it left many scrambling to figure out how to do church. Because so much of what we do focuses on the Sunday morning service, this posed a very real challenge for church leadership. What do we do when our weekly hour and a half long service is no longer an option? That is the question everyone was wrestling with in those early months of the Covid crisis. I sometimes wonder now however if we missed an opportunity. It seems we've jumped back into business as usual and I'm wondering if there was another path to explore. I recently read an update from a Christian working in a Muslim majority country in Central Asia. They’d been working diligently alongside a local pastor to grow a small church made up of former Muslims. The group had found favor with a local property owner and had been meeting in a storefront building on Sundays for several years. Every Sunday the church of just over fifty gathered to worship together, to listen to the preaching of their very gifted pastor and to fellowship with one another. All that changed when the building owner began to come under increasing pressure from the local Muslim community. Even though he appreciated the monthly rent, he eventually decided it just wasn’t worth it and asked them to move out. What did they do when their weekly hour and a half long service was no longer an option? They didn’t have the option of streaming the pastor’s preaching and they knew they wouldn’t be able to find another building big enough for their needs. How could they go on? The pastor and elders met and realized that they were going to have to shift away from the larger group weekly gathering. They would need to meet in many smaller groups in peoples’ homes. Rather than centralized teaching, the teaching would need to be spread out among a number of young leaders. The pastor took the time he usually invested in preparing his sermon and instead began to invest that time in preparing men. While it has been a challenging time, it has also been a time of real growth. In the smaller group settings, people have found it easier to share, to interact and to practice the "one anothers" of scripture. Young leaders, given new responsibility and a lot more time with the pastor or an elder have matured quickly. One of the most exciting aspects of this shift to smaller groups meeting in homes rather than an official church building, is that members of the church have been more active in inviting their friends and neighbors to attend and non-believers have felt more comfortable to come and visit. More Muslims are both seeing and hearing the gospel than ever before and the church is growing - both spiritually and numerically. This church still finds a place to gather everyone together once each month for a larger gathering where they worship and celebrate and yes, listen to their pastor’s preaching. They are figuring things out as they have learned in a new, personal way the truth of Paul’s words in Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” I hoped and prayed that the Coronavirus crisis would end quickly back in 2020. But I also prayed that God would shake up His church, refine us and teach us to walk in new, fresh (but very old) ways. I had hoped it would be an opportunity to learn from the church in Central Asia and China and Iran -- churches that cannot have large gatherings but rather come together in homes to “dedicate themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Don't get me wrong - I love my local church family and our church and I don't think the legacy church is going anywhere or needs to. I just wonder if there are other ways to do church that more reflect Jesus' focus on disciple making rather than just a holy huddle. Are there hybrid models we can discover or create? Can we reimagine a church that is less about gathering and more about going? As I wrestle with scripture I suppose I'll always wrestle with these questions and my hope is that this article will help others begin to wrestle as well. Practical Handles Here are a few resources I’ve found helpful to begin to have a handle on how to help our congregations gather in smaller groups in homes.
The Coronavirus was challenging, there can be no doubt about that. It may be a challenge unlike any we've faced in our lifetimes though I suspect there will be more to come. It may not yet be the time to consider new ways of doing church in North America, but it seems there is an opportunity to discover new rhythms, new methods, new wine skins that may lead to greater levels of fellowship, faithfulness, disciple making, evangelism and maturity. And looking at the data coming out of the Barna Group and Pew Research, we could use greater levels of all of those. If you found this article helpful, pass it along to a friend who you think may benefit from reading it.  In Curtis Sergeant's book, The Only One, he suggests the discipline of writing poetry as part of our Bible reading. "Poetry is by nature a limiting form of expression. I find that it forces me to think deeply as I search for just the right word to convey the nuance I am contemplating." As I have immersed myself in the first few chapters of John these past few weeks I decided to give it a try and tease out the nuances of what I've been contemplating. It was a rich experience and forced me to wrestle with what I feel the Lord has been highlighting for me. Writing poems from my Bible reading won't become a daily discipline, but I'll certainly come back to it when I come across a passage of scripture that I really want to dig into. I'd encourage you to give it a try sometime. Here is my poem, "Come and See" that I wrote as I dug deep into John 1:29-51. It may not be great poetry but it certainly helped me meditate and learn from this passage of scripture.
I wrote about the idea of inviting people to come and see for themselves in last week's post, Come and See. You can read it HERE. Did you find this post helpful? Share it with a friend.  If you have had the opportunity to listen to more than a few testimonies of people who were raised in lostness and came to faith, you have probably started to notice a couple of themes. One of those themes is the importance of a follower of Christ in their life. They met a Christian who through word or deed or both had an impact on their journey toward faith. Another that often comes up is the power of the word of God to bring conviction and give hope. In reading the Bible, they met a God who loved them enough to send his one an only son to save them from their sin, from fear and shame and from death.
In the scriptures, they met the living God. With this article, I want to provide tools to help you help your friends begin to explore the Bible and learn from the scriptures themselves. The Bible is both the greatest evangelistic tool that we have as well as the foundation for disciple making. Story Sets are apowerful tool to help your friends read the Bible. Story Sets A story set is a set of Bible stories that focus on a particular topic or theme. These can be used as a basis for exploring the Bible with your friend. Story sets are most often narrative in nature which allows pre-believers to enter into the story of the Bible and into discussion with you around the character and will of God. The purpose of story sets is to get people quickly into the scriptures, and to begin to teach them how to read the word of God. How To Use Story Sets As you connect with people who are far from God or if you are working with new believers, it will be natural to talk about the things that are important to our lives. There will be events in life that you will want to celebrate with your friends. There will be challenges in life that come up for which your friends will be looking for guidance. You will find yourself talking about the bigger questions of the meaning of life and the nature of God. Story sets give us a framework for introducing the word of God into these discussions. For example, let's say you are having a conversation with a young mother and she says, “I got into parenting before I was ready. Other people make it sound so easy. My mother just laughs. My grandmother says everything will be okay. But I’m trying to raise my kids without a map. Please help.” You could respond, “I’ve found a lot of guidance for parenting in the word of God. I’ve been so thankful that God gives us examples of parenting in the Bible. I wonder if you would like to read some of these stories together and see what we can learn from them.” You could then find or create a story set and read through a story each time you meet. Here is an example of a "New Parent" story set:
This particular story set finishes out by pointing not just to some good examples and lessons for parents, but with the story of Abraham and then the return of the prodigal son. Like this one, most story sets are evangelistic in nature, giving guidance for life while also pointing to Christ. One of the most commonly read story sets in the Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist world is Creation to Christ, a collection of stories, starting in Genesis, that give a general overview of the story of the whole Bible. Choosing The Right Stories How do we know which story set is the right story set to read with each of my friends? This is a discernment process that begins with prayer. Pray often for the opportunity to read the Bible with your friend. Pray for wisdom to know what stories in the Bible are the ones that will meet the felt needs of our friends and meet them where they are at. Choosing a story set also involves good listening. If we care about our friends, then we will be asking about their lives and as we get to know them, we’ll begin to hear the issues with which they are struggling. Then we can create or find an appropriate collection of Bible stories for their particular need. How To Read The Stories Isaiah 55:11 says, “When my word goes forth, it shall not return empty or void, but will accomplish the thing for which I sent it.” This is an amazing promise and it encapsulates why it is so important that we help our friends begin to read the scriptures. God will do the work! A process to read the Bible that missionaries around the world are finding to be fruitful is the Discovery Bible Study. It is a simple process that allows the Word of God and the Holy Spirit to be the main teachers. You don’t have to have all the answers but can trust that as you read the Bible with your friends, the Holy Spirit will guide them. It also begins the disciple making journey even before they come to faith as you model with them how to read the word of God and apply its teachings to your lives. [Learn more about Discovery Bible Study] The Discovery Process 1. Before you jump into the Bible story, be sure and spend some time connecting with your friend. How are they doing? How are their father and mother doing? How is work going? Spend time being with them. Don’t neglect this opportunity to extend hospitality. Share the week's highs and lows with one another. 2. Next turn to the passage. Read the passage aloud with your friend. Re-read it 3-4 times. Really! Re-reading helps ensure that they are actually getting into the passage. 3. Work together to retell the story in your own words. Don’t explain or interpret. Just retell the story. This provides an opportunity to make sure they are understanding the story and creates an opportunity to hear the story one more time. It also gives you and your friend practice in telling others the story. We want to be able to go home and say to a friend or family member, "Let me tell you the story I learned today." If in the process of your discussion your friend says something that is obviously not in the story, just ask the simple question, “Where do you see that in the passage?” 4. Next begin to discuss the following discovery questions:
5. Work together to think about what you can do this week to apply what you have learned in the passage. It can be helpful to actually write down an “I will . . . “ statement. 6. Spend time thinking about other people in your life who you could tell the story to this week. Ask, “Who can you tell this story to this week?” 7. Last question -- When can we meet again? Set a time to connect again and to read the next passage in the story set. Story Set Collection The following story sets are for you to use with your friends. Most are story sets that others have created and we have collected to share with you here. These should give you an idea of how you could create your own story sets to respond to the felt needs of your friends or disciples. 54 Trial DBS Series The parenting story set above comes from this great resource. I'd originally seen this collection of stories on a website which is no longer active. Thankfully my friend Chuck sent me a copy he received from a friend who was connected with Jerry Trousdale. This is a collection of 54 stores divided into nine major categories with six sets of six stories each. It is a really amazing resource. You can access this story set HERE. Creation to Christ - Long Version Beginning with Genesis, this study examines how God's plan of redemption unfolds throughout the Old Testament. It leaves the reader expectant for the fulfillment of the many prophecies found throughout the scripture. You can access this story set HERE. Creation to Christ - Short Version A modified, shorter version of the original Creation to Christ set. You can access this story set HERE. Stories of Hope A series of seven stories that introduce the reader to Jesus. You can access this story set HERE. Signs of John A series of seven stories that introduce the reader to Jesus. You can access this story set HERE. Learning to Follow Jesus A series of stories that allow you to disciple a new believer into the basics of following Christ. You can access this story set HERE. Other Story Set Resources
 I've written often about the importance of immersing ourselves in the word of God and have shared tools for helping us do that well. Today I want to take one step back and share a short scripture hammer tool to help young believers discover the absolute importance the scriptures. The tools are great but if your disciple doesn't understand why they need to apply the tool, well, it may not do much good.
When I sit down to read these with my disciple - or a group of disciples - I read each passage two to three times aloud and then have the individual or the group summarize the basic message in their own words. I save the last passage - Jesus' confrontation with the devil in the wilderness - for last as a way to sort of watch Jesus apply the scriptures in His own life.
The goal is to help our disciples discover the joy, the benefit and the power of the scriptures in our lives. The sooner we can help them begin prayerfully engaging with the scriptures on a daily basis, the quicker they will grow toward maturity. If we really believe that the Holy Spirit will guide us - and them - into all truth (John 16:13) then we have to help them get into the scriptures trusting that the Holy Spirit will indeed disciple them into all truth. Do you have a young believer in your life who is struggling to get into the word daily? Find some time to sit down and work through these scriptures together. Do you have another scripture or story that you would include in the list? Share it in the comments below. Scripture List:
If you do take a disciple through this discovery study, let me know how it went in the comments as well.  As we immerse ourselves in the story of the scriptures, we allow the Holy Spirit to use them to shape our view of the world, of ministry and of ourselves. Scripture hammer trainings allow a trainer to step out of the way and allow the Bible to do the heavy lifting of the training. They require little charism on the part of the trainer, are hard to argue with and place a tool in the hands of those we are training that is immediately reproducible.
The basic idea is to create a list of scriptures that all point toward the basic Biblical principle or lesson you are wanting your trainees to grasp. A scripture hammer study is best done in groups of 2-5 and then debriefed as a group. You can create your own for any topic you'd like to train on. I've created a one page handout with six scripture hammer studies that I've learned from others and that I've been using to train. The focus of these particular studies are:
[CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE SIX STUDIES] I've written previously about a few of these topic and you can check those out at the links below:  In the 18th chapter of the book of Luke, Jesus encounters the rich young ruler. If you’ve been a follower of Christ for long, it is probably a familiar story. If not, stop and read it here. A devout man approaches Jesus wondering what he must do to be saved. Jesus walks through the commandments - have you obeyed these? The man replies confidently that he has kept the commands all of his life. And then Jesus does a curious thing. He asks the man to do one more thing: sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. The story follows that, because the man was very wealthy he became very sad and presumably, walked away. Following Jesus is a tall order. My friend Justin uses this story in trainings to highlight the reality that Jesus isn’t looking for lukewarm Christians. This isn’t the only time that Jesus’ words and teaching drive away potential followers. There’s that crazy scene in John 6 where “many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” Jesus is looking for committed disciples. He will build his kingdom not with crowds but with dedicated disciples. While the world yearns for numbers, Jesus is looking for committed men and women. Justin lays out what this commitment might look like using the great commission. He draws out five commitments from the passage and they provide a helpful rubric through which I can reflect on my own heart. I think they will be helpful for you as well. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Five Commitments To Be A Disciple of Jesus
It starts with our willingness and commitment. If you are a leader, a good question to ask first is, "Am I willing?" but the next question has to be, "Are the people I am investing in willing?" Are they committed disciples or merely lukewarm attendees. You can fill the pews with the latter but Jesus wants to transform your community, your city, your state and nation - he will turn the world upside down with unschooled, ordinary men and women if they will commit themselves to living the surrendered life and being with Jesus. As we answer this question we can begin working toward the next question as well: Are they able?
It is no mistake that Jesus bookends his commission with authority and presence. I can do much in my own power but Jesus reminds me that unless I live the surrendered life which I can only do if I abide in Him and experience His presence, little of what I do will have any eternal impact.  For most of my life I’ve wanted to improve my prayer life. Having read the biographies of many great men and women of God and observing the Biblical examples from Jesus to Moses to the apostles, I’ve always known that prayer was an important part of the life of the disciple of Jesus. And for most of my life, I’ve not lived up to my own desires to pray more. The reality is that my knowledge of the importance of prayer has not yet led to a default toward prayer. But I want it to. Curtis Sergeant introduced me to a helpful tool to improve my prayer life, helping me to pray for one hour at a time. I don’t use it often enough but because it is a helpful tool, I’ll be adding it to the Everywhere to Everywhere resource page. The resource is called The Prayer Wheel and it is a part of the Zume Free Online Training. The prayer wheel allows you to pray in five minute increments for one hour. You will need some sort of timing device (Zume Timer) that you can set to let you know when five minutes is up so you can move on to the next section for prayer. THE BASIC PRAYER WHEEL OUTLINE
I have created a simple bookmark so that you can carry the prayer wheel with you where ever you go. Set aside an hour and spend it in prayer with the Prayer Wheel as your guide. Download the Prayer Wheel Bookmark I hope that you will find the prayer wheel a helpful tool for increasing your prayer life and your ability to hear from the Holy Spirit. It has been in many ways a helpful training tool for me but it will only help you if you try it out and apply it. Learn more about the Prayer Wheel from others:  I remember growing up, my grandmother would tell stories of the waning days of the Great Depression and the first years of World War II. I was captivated by the way she and the whole country seemed to respond to the crisis of war and depression. She told stories not only of the young men who willingly signed up to defend freedom but also of the ways those who stayed behind stepped up to serve, sacrificially rationing and growing gardens and doing anything they could to support the war effort. Those stories left a longing in me to live a purposeful life of sacrifice and meaning. The Covid-19 pandemic is our crisis. For many of us, we are looking for purposeful ways to respond. Somehow, “stay at home and watch Netflix” just doesn’t seem all that meaningful, even though we know it is the best thing to do (at least the stay at home part). As followers of Christ then, what are the ways we can respond that are meaningful and in partnership with the mission of God. Nearly six billion people in our world do not yet call themselves Christians and over two billion don’t even have access to an opportunity to hear the gospel. Here are five different ways you can be a part of God’s global mission, even as you stay at home. LEARN As the global pause button continues to be depressed, take the extra time you have to learn more about God’s mission and how you can be a part of it. Here are several ideas:
ENCOURAGE Isolation and loneliness are real issues in a time of pandemic. I trust you are already doing your part to discover creative ways to encourage those in your neighborhood, your church family and your immediate family. But missionaries and our global brothers and sisters in Christ are also isolated in times like these. Here are a few ideas for encouraging them.
PRAY Too often, followers of Jesus underestimate the power of prayer. It seems that in the pandemic and the forced slowing of life, prayer would be the greatest response would could give to the Lord. Here are a number of resources to help you pray more.
GO Mission trips have been canceled, missionaries have had to return from the field and stay at home orders abound across the globe and yet the opportunity to go into the Muslim world has never been greater. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, more people on every continent are home bound than ever in world history. They are isolated, alone, and wondering what tomorrow will hold. Hundreds of thousands of young Muslim men and women who speak English are also sheltering in their homes, smartphone in hand, surfing the Internet in search of answers, hope and friendship. What if they met you? Volunteer with Embassy and they will teach you how to connect online with Muslims in difficult to access nations. You will almost certainly be the first follower of Jesus they have ever met. Sign up for a free one hour introductory training or stop by the Embassy website to learn more. FILTER We live in a media saturated world. Messages come fast and furious from every device we own and many are wondering if we can trust any of the news we hear. How do we filter through all the nose? The reality is that we are all being discipled - being formed - by the messages that dominate our days. Because of this it is imperative that we shut off the noise and immerse ourselves in the word of God. As we do this, the word of God will increasingly become the filter through which all other messages have to pass. If the dominant source of messages in our day is our favorite right leaning or left leaning news outlet, it will become the filter, even filtering the way we read the Bible. Nobody is making you listen to the news or keep scrolling through your Facebook feed. Nobody is forcing you to not read your Bible. It’s a choice we all have to make. We have an opportunity to filter what we read, hear and see. As we do that and as we prayerfully seek God’s direction each day we will find the things we can do in this season of global pandemic and God will use us in his global purposes. |
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