Why should you pray?

The Porto-Spain Missions Experience was a success!

This past Thursday, the team recapped and challenged us to consider how every believer must seek community. The Christ-follower community has two benefits: mutual ministry of encouragement and exhortation (one another) & communal outreach (they will know we are Christians by our love).

God helped each team member know more about Him and how God is working i nthe world through the relationships built within the team and within the whole group which included three missionary families (Hawkins, Plaster, Satterthwaite).

One team member described to me how we take for granted Christian friendships. He shared how Rob Plaster has great friends but now lacks a great friend who is a Christian. That could make life more challenging and foster loneliness or sadness. But our team came alongside our missionary partners and love them, ate with them, enjoyed this journey together.

Pastor Bob Doerr had a chance to hear the struggles of the missionary partners, to understand what they are going through, to pray with them, and now to pray for them. I forget that I can go about the "busyness" of ministry and forget those who we have partnered with in reaching the world for Christ.

Wooster Grace values people, especially those we partner with in reaching out to others. Stop. Say a pray for our missionary partners--or someone you know who is reaching out to others in another country. They need our prayers.

I loved the challenge Renee threw down. Why should I pray? Because our missionaries need us. They don't need our money--they need our prayers. They need to know that we are praying for them. She's right.

Don't know what to pray or how to pray--adapt this one from the Apostle Paul

(Ephesians 3:14-19):

When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.