I recently began a 5-part sermon series entitled BLESS. Churches in central Texas and all over the country are utilizing this outreach tool. It is an acronym which stands for:
Begin with prayer
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Begin with prayer. I love the fact that this initiative begins with prayer. One of my pet peeves is when people come up with designs or plans for any number of causes or good intentions for the church, list all the plans, and the last one is, "remember to pray." I think prayer should not be our last resort but our first, last, and everything in between!
But when we are talking about the miraculous moment of conversion in a lost person's soul, this fact alone drives us to our knees for many reasons. One reason is the lost condition of mankind. We are utterly lost and helpless to save ourselves. Next, we pray fervently because only God can save a soul, so we should be constantly pleading with Him for salvation for the lost and for His help to make us effective witnesses to the lost with whom we have contact.
One of the churches that has and will continue to focus on the BLESS method is Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC. My good friend, Dave Owen, is the teaching pastor at Providence. Their study on "Begin with Prayer" along with Dave and Jon Ferguson's book,
B.L.E.S.S: 5 Everyday Ways to Love Your Neighbor and Change the World, were most helpful and inspirational to me in my preparation for this series. By the way, Dave will preach at GHBC on March 20, 2022, during the Dell Match Play golf tournament in Austin. His good friend and US Open Champion, Webb Simpson, will most likely be playing in the tournament.
Though the word prayer is not mentioned in our biblical text for today, this passage of Scripture gives us powerful reasons
why we should be praying. We know that salvation is utterly impossible without the power of God. Our greatest need is to call upon God to do what only He can do, and that is bring a lost, dead, and hopeless soul into a relationship with Jesus Christ so he or she is born again and made a child of God!
Ephesians 2:1 describes a sinner's condition, and it is very bleak and hopeless. To be spiritually dead means you do not have spiritual life. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, does not dwell within you, and because of this fallen condition, you and I are desperately lost and in need of God's mercy and grace.
Before God's radical salvation rescued us, we too were dead in trespasses and sins. We lived in continual disobedience to God. We were sinners and quite good at it. We were born that way and will die that way and go to Hell unless God intervenes in our lives. Think about that. Your neighbors who do not know Jesus are just like you were before you came to know Jesus. They are lost, hurting, and hurling toward a Christless eternity called Hell. That fact alone should drive us to our knees to plead with God to have mercy on them as He has had mercy on us.
Will you stop and pray right now for your neighbors? Ask God to give you a heart for them, to pray for them, show the love of Jesus to them, and share the good news of Jesus with them.
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