Week of December 4

Following God

Sowing our Prayer… Reaping the Spirit

This week, we will do something a little different.  Every day, pray aloud all of Psalm 51.  Make David’s words your own and pray them to God.  Each day, there is be a different verse on which to focus and meditate after you have prayed.  Then, sometime in your day, find a way to let that verse take hold of you and live through you.

Monday	V. 1-2
Tuesday	V. 6-7
Wednesday	V. 7-8
Thursday	V. 10-12
Friday	V. 13
Saturday	V. 15

Every year, I (Joel) get excited when the first snow of the season falls.  The white covering over all the dormant trees and the ground makes a dreary landscape beautiful.  Besides the beauty, a magnificent image can come from the first snow of the season. 

Snow symbolizes a re-birth.  There is a season every year where snow covers the ground like a blanket and allows the land to rest, but when it melts away, there is new life, there is re-birth.  In the same way, we Christians have experience this in our lives.  We have been covered and been made white as snow.  But this isn’t the end.  When the cover goes away, we are not to look like autumn anymore, but like spring.  Life and growth happen spiritually.

As a church, we also have experience a time of beautiful snow cover, but as the real snow comes here in Indiana, the time of growth, re-birth, and life is coming for us as a church.  Our 6 months of waiting is over, it is time for growth.  It is time to bud like spring.  We are not to look like we did before; this is a time of new life.

Pray for the Spirit to enliven Oak Chapel even more than we are, and allow us to blossom as the springtime.

Week of November 20

Following God

Sowing our Prayer… Reaping the Spirit

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!

~ Romans 8:15 in the Message ~

Monday	Romans 8:15
Tuesday	John 1:1-18
Wednesday	Luke 7:36-50
Thursday	Matthew 5:14-16
Friday	John 4:1-42
Saturday	Acts chapters 6-7

A life of light that does not seek change in the darkness of the world is not an effective, productive, or useful light.  Shining a flashlight when the sun is out does nothing.  We as Christians are lights to the world, but what good are we unless we shine our light in the darkness instead of where all the other light is?  A light-filled life without shining in the darkness is not a life worth having. 

Seek God by asking him what is next. Be expectant for Him and his message.  Let us be a church that burns with passion for God.  The more we learn about God, the more it becomes obvious that He is on a mission of Love to bring others close to him.  If we are his followers, his light, then we need to take this light into the darkness, to take our light on HIS mission.

Pray for God to direct your light into the darkness.  Pray that the light of Oak Chapel will blaze brighter and brighter so that the darkness runs from our community and from the nearby counties.

Week of November 13

Trusting God

Sowing our Prayer… Reaping the Spirit

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

~ Corrie Ten Boom ~

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

~ Robert Frost ~

We may run, walk, stumble, drive, or fly, but let us never lose sight of the reason for the journey or miss a chance to see a rainbow on the way.      

~ Gloria Gaither ~

Monday	Genesis 12:1-5
Tuesday	Exodus 3:1-4:21
Wednesday	Matthew 14:22-33
Thursday	Luke 5:27-28
Friday	Acts 9:10-18
Saturday	Acts 16:6-10

There are many points in the story of God’s interaction with His people (Israel and the Church) that He asks His people to take a step on a journey without knowing the destination.  The scriptures above are some of these stories. 

As we look into the unknown future that we have before us, we know a few things: 1) The journey itself will not be easy; 2) We will take each step together as a church, as a family; and 3) God is with us all the way. 

As we journey this road toward fulfilling our mission together, we must learn continually to follow God faithfully.  This is a journey we travel together.  Let us pray about it together:

We will pray for the Spirit to guide Oak Chapel on our journey to fulfill the mission of evangelism in our community.