Monday, February 29, 2016

Ideas for Prayer During Family Worship in Training the Children on How to Pray
Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church

Family worship may be defined as the regular coming together of a family to worship God in song, in reading the Word, and in prayer. It doesn’t have to be long. Nor does it have to be flashy. It shouldn’t be a sermon; nor should it be boring and dull. Family worship should be done by every Christian household because God deserves to be worshiped, in our homes, by our families, led by fathers, every day.

In this article, I want to provide some ideas for fathers in leading in the prayer portion of family worship so as to train the children on how to pray by employing different forms of prayer.

  • Adoration —  God is to be adored and praised by His people. To adore God means that His people extol His greatness and speak of His power and might. Families may adore God by speaking of His attributes and praising Him for who He is and what He has done.
  • Triune God — Christians worship a Trinitarian God. We worship One God who eternally exists in three co-eternal, co-existing, co-equal Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. The Father could instruct the family of each member of the Trinity in their particular roles, for instance, in salvation. The Father elects. The Son redeems. The Spirit regenerates. The Father picked. The Son purchased. The Spirit preserves. Pray Trinitarian prayers!
  • Thanksgiving — Families could spend much time, undoubtedly, in thanking God for many things. Families may remember how God protected them in hardship, how God delivered a family member’s life from a near-death experience. Families may thank God for providing the daily food, shelter, clothing, and salvation. Perhaps fathers may encourage the children to thank God for 2 or 3 things when it’s their turn to pray.
  • Supplication — Scripture commands us to present our supplications to God. We can bring our petitions to God who promises to hear when His people pray. So ask! Seek! Knock! Fathers may instruct on how to ask and for what to ask. He can model how to pray in line with God’s will.
  • Confession — All have sinned and, in the family, many have sinned against each other that very day. Use family worship not as a way of pridefully refraining from family worship out of shame but rather as an opportunity to confess sins to one another and to God. The father may choose to teach on what biblical forgiveness is and how it’s so important to repent of, confess, and forsake our sins. God hears and God lavishly forgives!
  • Holiness — A family may choose to spend a night praying specifically for holiness. Perhaps it’s praying for a closer walk with Christ. Maybe the father prays for more patience, or more contentment, or a greater, more sacrificial love for his wife. A family could pray together for holiness and earnestly believe that God will be pleased to answer these prayers.
  • Family (immediate, extended, church) — How many are the opportunities to pray for each other in the immediate family. Pray for every member in the household by name -- the youngest all the way to the oldest. Pray for grandparents, great-grandparents, and even relatives both near and far.
  • Local Church — A marvelous way that fathers can lead in the home is to model for his wife and children the importance of praying for the local church. The family can pray for their pastor as he studies during the week, or for the protection of the flock from division, conflict, and strife. God’s people can pray for the families, marriages, widows, divorced. Families might pray for the hurting & downcast. Don’t forget to pray for greater power.
  • Missions — The work of God and the gospel of grace spreads far beyond the immediate vicinity of the church. Teach your children this! Remind them that God’s fame extends to the ends of the globe. Pray for the persecuted. Pray for missionaries, by name, by region, specifically. Pray for fruit.
  • Friends — Pray for your friends whom you know, love, and care for. Pray for your neighbors that you want to see come to Christ. Pray for those on the sports team (and coaches) to repent and believe. Pray for teachers, professors, acquaintances, co-workers and others to be drawn to Christ.
  • Elders — Families should pray frequently for the shepherd-elders of their church. A father cannot instruct his children too much on the importance of godly leadership and integrity. Families can pray for the men to be above-reproach, faithful to their wives, pure, not given to anger, and not out of control. Families can pray for the elder-shepherds to lead the flock with wisdom & integrity before the eyes of God. Pray that God would give them joy.
  • A-C-T-S — Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. This simple acronym can help fathers teach a simple model or pattern for prayer.
  • Nation/leadership/president — The Word of God instructs all believers to pray, ‘first of all’, for leaders, and kings, and all those in authority. God’s people must not forget to pray for political authorities. Families must pray for God to save many and give godly leaders and to save from wicked, selfish leaders.
  • Police/fire — Families can and should praise God that He has given law-enforcement to serve communities and to provide a safe environment for people. Fathers can teach the children to thank God for the police men and firefighters and all the paramedics and related personnel who seek to serve us. Praise God!
  • Unsaved friends/neighbors — Undoubtedly you have unsaved friends and neighbors that observe you and your family interact. Perhaps as you sing on the back patio during family worship or have a church get together. Or maybe you have bible-studies in your home and the neighbors notice the get togethers. Pray that God would give you many opportunities to proclaim His glories and call the neighbors to forsake all and follow Christ to be saved from coming wrath. Pray specifically and by name.
  • God’s attributes — Our God is unfathomably glorious and ineffably wise. He has revealed Himself to us. Fathers should teach children to remember who God is and to praise God for who He is. Pray through His attributes: God’s love, holiness, righteousness, mercy, wrath, grace, patience, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, aseity, immutability, faithfulness, eternality, Fatherhood, sovereignty, goodness. Remember! Pray! Reflect! Worship! Exalt! Glory! Savor Him! 

More articles can be found at VassalOfTheKing.com
Praying for the Preaching of the Word
Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church

The high point of every week for a Christian rests in the public proclamation of Holy Scripture. This comprises the full meal that God provides for His people to sustain them, encourage them, reprove them, and comfort their souls till the next gathering. The preaching of the Word may be likened to going to a market. When God’s people gather together and hear the Word expounded, it is like the market day for the soul when the supply of spiritual food is richly and amply provided and the shelves are full of goods to nourish the child of God till the next feast day. If the Word preached has such a high place of importance in the Christian life, we must pray for the preaching of the Word.

This essay serves to provide seven simple aids to your prayers for the preaching.

1. Pray for UNCTION.
Preaching accomplishes good only in so far as the Spirit of God attends the going forth of divine truth with supernatural power. This Spirit-endowed, glorious effectual, and desperately needed power is what every preacher needs. It makes the message God’s message. This unction makes the arrows of truth sharp to penetrate the heart of the listener. Pray for unction! Seek God tirelessly and hold God to His Word. Unction comes as God’s people desperately ask for it. Ceaselessly ask for this power!

2. Pray for FAITHFULNESS.
Your minister has studied this week and the Word has soaked deep into the fabric of his soul. He knows his message and he knows what he must say. Pray that everything he says is faithful to the text of Scripture. Spend much time praying throughout the week as your shepherd isolates himself alone with God and with His Word. Pray that He would cut the Word straight and herald God’s meaning to God’s people and call for God-graced change in life!

3. Pray for SANCTIFICATION.
Preaching serves to declare God’s message from God’s Word to God’s people so as to produce Godlike and God-empowered change in the hearts and lives. The declaration of Holy Scripture is God’s primary means of growing the people of God. Just as a man regularly eats to stay nourished and healthy so a child of God regularly feeds on God’s preached Word to stay nourished, healthy, strong, and vigilant.

4. Pray for CONVERSION.
One of the primary vehicles that God employs in the everlasting saving of souls is the heralding of the King’s message. Pray for the minister to come with urgency in his bones and passion in his heart to proclaim Christ and Him crucified. Pray that Christ would be preached and that God would draw His elect through His sovereign Spirit.

5. Pray for EDIFICATION.
The body of Christ gathered is to be built up, strengthened, and established in the faith. The faith once for all handed down to the saints must be guarded, preached, protected, and obeyed. Pray for God to build up His people so that they would serve one another sacrificially, comfort one another heartfully, and counsel one another biblically. The people of God grow till all are fully mature in Christ. Pray to this end.

6. Pray for REVIVAL.
True revival comes when the Spirit of God sovereignly and mercifully awakens His people to the beauty of Christ, the power of prayer, and the urgency of soul-winning. Revival comes to the people of God who ask for it. Revival cannot be planned nor can God be coerced to bring  it. It comes as the people of God take hold of God in prayer, commit to holiness of life, prioritize preaching, and compel nonbelievers to embrace Christ through repentance of sin and faith in Him. As God revives His people so a true working of God will then affect the society.

7. Pray for HUMILITY.
God tells His people to receive the Word with humility. During the week leading up to the Lord’s day, pray for humility in your own heart to receive the preached Word with a meek and willing spirit, eager to follow Christ regardless of the sacrifice. You pray for your pastor to be humble and diligent in his study so can can preach well. May God’s people listen well also. Pray to never criticize the message, or the preacher, or be distracted away from the sermon. But pray that God would enable you to focus, show you where you need to change, and then make those changes through specific implementation of the truths declared from Scripture. Humbly receive conviction and grow by it.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

I LOVE MY CHURCH.
Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church

I love the church. Christ is the Head over His church. He rules. He leads. He is our captain, our guard, our preserver, our protector and our provider. He saved us and He secures us. I absolutely love the church. If I could say this: I love my church. I don't mean that they belong to me; rather, I love the particular local assembly in which God has privileged me to shepherd and serve. I love the place where God has me. Perfect? No -- because I'm there! Is it without sin?  No -- because I'm still there! But I love the flock of God which has been chosen by God, beloved by Christ, quickened by the Spirit and which thus zealously desires to engage in good deeds. I love the church. This certainly is not exhaustive, but I want to provide 8 simple, brief reasons WHY I LOVE THE CHURCH.

I love the church because it is…

1. An assembly of believers bought with the blood of Christ.
The church consists of the community of the redeemed. Those for whom Christ died comprise the body of Christ. He redeemed them with His precious, spotless, eternal, unblemished blood. The church is a gathering of Christians.

2. An assembly of believers hungry for the preached Word.
Sheep must eat. If they don’t eat, they’ll be famished for a time and inevitably they’ll die. The people of God hunger for God’s Word since there they know they’ll find Christ, hear from Him, and grow. Believers want to be nourished!

3. An assembly of believers earnestly fighting sin & zealously pursuing holiness.
God’s chosen and beloved must put to death the former deeds of darkness and strive to replace those old habits with new, godly patterns of holiness. Christians fight sin & hate it. Christians pursue Christ and purity with fervency!

4. An assembly of believers devoted to fervent prayer privately and corporately.
Healthy relationships require good communication. It is no different with believers and God. God instructs believers to pray without ceasing & He provides manifold blessings upon congregations that gather to pray. God responds!

5. An assembly of believers committed to evangelism pleading for souls!
To be saved by God is to love His gospel of sovereign grace. God’s gospel is an ocean of love. Believers meditate on it. It also entails a passionate concern for others to know Christ, hear this gospel, and repent to be saved. Christians refuse to go to heaven alone. He whom the gospel has saved burns in his soul to take others with him to glory.

6. An assembly of believers captivated by Christ and compelled to live for Him!
Like the prophets of old, godly living is not satisfied with knowledge of God or mere obedience to God. The believer wants God & hungers for Christ Himself. Christ’s radiant beauties & perfect delights compel believers to live for Him!

7. An assembly of believers loving one another enough to serve, reprove, & encourage one another.
Like a servant looks to his master and like a child looks to his father, so every believer looks to Christ and longs to be like Him. Christians love as they’ve received love. They serve and encourage others as Christ has done to them. God’s people count it a joyful duty and rewarding delight to serve others & sacrificially love their neighbor!

8. An assembly of believers supportive of their shepherd-leaders.
Sheep depend on, love, follow, and need their shepherds. Just as Christ is the ultimate Shepherd, he has given under-shepherds to care for His people, to feed them by preaching and to care for their souls. God’s people love their shepherds, seek to know them, respect them, pray for them diligently, serve them happily, and make their shepherding a joy.

More articles can be found at VassalOfTheKing.com

Monday, February 8, 2016

We've put together 7 brief audio clips providing a commentary on Christ Fellowship Bible Church's mission statement:

CFBC exists to glorify God by preaching the Word, evangelizing the lost, discipling the saved, and obeying Jesus Christ, all by the power of the Spirit.

 7-part audio fleshing out 'who we are' at CFBC—

1. We exist...  |  listen
2. To glorify God  |  listen
3. By preaching the Word  |  listen
4. Evangelizing the lost  |  listen
5. Discipling the saved  |  listen
6. Obeying Jesus Christ  |  listen
7. All by the power of the Spirit  |  listen


Here is the link to all of the AUDIOS here: http://bit.ly/1PTdytW
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