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June 2006 NewsletterPrayer Retreat Reflections: "The only enduring motive for prayer is that God is worthy to be sought" What motivates you to pray? What challenges you to lead others toward prayer? Are you driven by duty? Are you pushed to prayer by the "ought to's", the "should of's", the "I'd better do that's"? Do we pray just so we will appear "spiritual" before others? Daniel Henderson challenged us at the District Prayer retreat to pray based not on how we feel about prayer, not because of duty or anything we could muster up with in ourselves. He challenged us to pray simply because of who God is. Think about that; "He is worthy to be sought". One of the greatest challenges in our ministry is to induce in ourselves (and in our people) a desperation. We are a people bored with God. When God is the only attraction, very few people show up. How can we begin to wet our spiritual taste buds anew with a fresh desire to seek after God? It must start with us growing in our delight for the very character and nature of God. Then we will hunger to seek God, not for what He can give us, but we will seek God himself. Our motive for prayer then becomes a longing for God Himself who is worthy to be sought. Practically how can we begin to foster God-seeking prayer among our people? One of the suggestions Daniel Henderson made at the conference, we have started to implement at our church. In our prayer time before the Sunday morning services, at our monthly ministry team meetings, we begin by reading a portion of scripture. Just about any of the Psalms work well. As we read, we reflect on how Gods Word reveals the character and nature of God. We share these observations with each other, and then move into prayer, praising God for who He is. The character and nature of God is now the foundation for our prayer. Doing that has reminded us of how worthy He is to be sought after and it also sets a "God-seeking" tone for the rest of the prayer time and discussion that follows. God is worthy to be sought. Think about that for a few minutes. We all say we believe that...how does that truth reflect in your day-timer and calendar? Is God's worthiness being reflected by my actions? Careful now, this is not another call to dredge back up guilt-trips or duty drivers. Simply ask yourself, "Is God worthy to be sought?" Pastor's and Wives Retreat November 2-5, 2006 AT Running Y Ranch in
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