What kind of churches are we setting out to build in the Pacific NW? Special guest speaker, John Orton, talks about the mission of Jesus and prayer! We want to be a people radically shaped by grace, empowered by the Holy Spirit, living for the extension of the Kingdom and this cannot happen without prayer! Prayer changes what we see by changing our perspective. Prayer also has authority in Jesus in that the power of our prayer is about who we are praying to. The Great Commission is book-ended with a reminder that God is the one carrying it out, not us. Prayer, therefore, is not a response to who God is. It’s not need based, it’s vision based.
What we see changes what we value. If we see God for who He is, it changes our values. All authority has been given to Him and He is with us until the end. What we value changes what we do. We need to do things outside of our own capacity and put ourselves in a place of dependence on God. John closes by asking us to think on a few questions: What would it look like for you to get to work 5 minutes early to pray for your co-workers? What would it look like to walk through your neighborhood with your kids and pray for God to open doors to the Gospel? For Him to use you? What would it look like for us, as a church, to say our programs and our strategies simply aren’t enough?