Bible Verses for Sunday Service August 27, 2023
Habakkuk 3:3
God came from Teman,
the Holy One from Mount Paran.
His glory covered the heavens
and his praise filled the earth.
Announcements:
We will meet at Lake Elmo today right after church and enjoy an afternoon of fellowship and recreation. We have BBQ sandwiches and lots of salads and deserts to enjoy. Besides the fun, we plan on baptism. So please come out to be blessed so see some young people obey the Lord and be an encouragement to them in their commitment.
For the start of AWANA with the start of school, we will meet on August 30 at 6:30 to go through the schedule and discuss any changes or challenges. We greatly appreciate all those who’ve committed to help in our ministry to the children of our church and community. We are always need people who could listen to verses and lead groups. So if you could help, please let us know.
AWANA starts on Sept 13 @ 6:30PM. In case you didn’t know, AWANA is a ministry to children and youth that emphasizes scripture memory and understanding. It is also fun with AWANA games. This year, we plan four groups, Cubbies (Two years before Kindergarten), Sparks (Kindergarten to 2nd grade), T&T (third to sixth grades) and Trek (Teens). Please help us get the word our and invite the children in our neighborhoods and families. We also greatly appreciate your prayers.
For prayer requests, we are including cards in the bulletin for you to share your requests. Please drop them in the offering plate or leave them on the foyer table. After we process them, we will email them so that we can all be praying during the week.
Lastly, but by no means least, we thank Don West for waxing and polishing the tile floors. They look great!
Sermon:
Today, Pastor spoke on Luke 11:1-4 in a sermon he titled “A Person of Prayer.” By remembering who prayed for him and Gaylene earlier, and by noting that those people are now gone, Pastor introduced today’s service by challenging us. Who will prayer for us now previous prayer warriors are dead and gone? Shouldn’t it be us! So, let us renew our commitment to pray for ourselves and others, especially using the model Jesus taught His disciples. Pastor’s sermon developing this idea had two main points.
Firstly, Pastor remarked that a person of prayer needs a place for prayer, just like Jesus. As prayer was so important in Jesus’ life, it was sometimes difficult for Him to pray because of the demanding crowds who sought Him out. So, He made sure he had a place to pray before He prayed, which He did before all major decisions like picking the disciples. Just like prayer is important to Jesus, prayer should be important to us, a regular part of our lives. Are we inviting Jesus in to our lives on a regular basis, including Him our decisions? We can do better.
In his second point, to have a better prayer life, Pastor suggested that a person of prayer needs a pattern of prayer. This pattern is what Jesus gave to the disciples in response to their request. While we are Luke, Pastor covered the shorter version of the Lord’s Prayer there. Matthew has the longer version. Nevertheless the four essentials are in both. We must first include worship in prayer. Our God is Holy and we must recognize that. A corollary of that is having an attitude of submission while we pray. Such a view properly places us before God as we pray, including remembering that prayer isn’t about us, what we need, but is before God. Next, Jesus recognized in a broken world, we would have needs. So we can and should include our requests to our Father. Jesus’s focus was on the basic necessities of life, food, shelter and protection from harm. Lastly, and to be developed more fully next week, is confession to Our Father.
These points provide a great and timely reminder to us. Does our prayer life look like Jesus’ prayer life? Could we improve it using the template Jesus provided. Let’s make every effort to pray well for others and ourselves.
Accessing the Service, Bulletin and Sermon Outline:
Here are the pages from the bulletin, click on the images below to see them full size:
If you would like to have the sermon outline, you can download it here, a pdf file.
If you would like a link to this service you can find it here. Perhaps you would like to share it with your friends. You could also share that link on social media, if you use any of the providers. We use Rumble, a safe alternative to Google’s YouTube.