Prayers for the Church in 2020

From the Salvation Army, you're listening to Wonderful Words of Life. Welcome back, everybody, and I hope you had a merry Christmas. Say welcome to our listeners, Chris Benjamin. Hello, everyone.

I hope you had a good Christmas. Who's joining us in our studio here in Atlanta, Georgia, where we can't really complain about it being too cold. It never really gets too cold. We don't really see snow and ice in Atlanta. But if we do, and all of my northern United States friends will laugh at me, if there's even a hint, we will close this building down immediately. We will shut down Atlanta if there's a little bit.

It becomes Armageddon in this city. We pray you had a great Christmas. And this is our last episode for this decade.

Is that even possible? Yeah, that's crazy. It really has been a good year, and we've got so much to share with you in the episodes to come. But, Chris, welcome back, and thanks for this Advent series that you really helped us put together. It was an honor. I was just excited that we were able to pull this together in the way that I felt the Lord was directing.

And we know that because we honored that, that we believe that this is going to make a huge impact in someone's life out there. But in this last episode of this series, we, of course, New Year's is just right around the corner, so we asked everyone to just discuss, you know, looking ahead to 2020, you know, what do you see for yourself? What are your prayers for your own life?

And then what are your prayers for the church as a whole? So I love, Giovanni keeps referring to this year as her year of jubilee, and I love that. And so I just had to look up, you know, biblically, you know, what the year of jubilee was. And according to the book of Leviticus, the year of jubilee was, it took place at the end of seven cycles of sabbatical years.

I won't get into all of that. But in this year, Hebrew slaves and prisoners would be set free, debts would be forgiven, and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest. So this was just a year of just grace and just outpouring that, it looks like even financially. And, you know, so all that being said, you know, I'm claiming this my year of jubilee as well. Funny enough, I will actually in 2020 finally be out of student debt. Wow.

Congratulations. It already is my year of jubilee. Well, listen, thank you again for all your work, particularly this year on Wonderful Words of Life and for this series that we've just finished. We do start a new series next week in 2020.

Yeah, absolutely. So we're excited about this series. We're joined by our friends, Rob and Heather Dolby, for a very powerful series.

So visit us on our site to find out more. Salvationarmysoundcast.org. Thank you for joining us.

Yeah. Happy New Year, and we'll see you on Wonderful Words of Life next week. This Christmas, you're invited to fight for the hungry, the hurting, and the hopeless. To fight for those struggling to keep a roof over their heads, make ends meet, and survive the holidays. To fight for justice, hope, and love all year long. Your sustaining monthly gift of just $25 doubles the Salvation Army's ability to assist our neighbors battling poverty and help them win. Join the fight for good at salvationarmyusa.org. So talking about 2020, I mean, like you said, you've got these visions, these dreams, these prayers, these hopes. It's a new year, and I think we always walk into it. Yeah, with the resolutions, but what are our prayers and our hopes for the church?

I would even say the Salvation Army as a whole. What does that look like? What are our prayers for that? What are our dreams and desires? For me, it's simple. It's just Jesus.

That's it. Why don't we keep... The gospel speaks for itself. So why don't we just turn back to the gospel?

We get so distracted, so distracted by everything else. Not saying different types of programs aren't great, but let's just get back to the gospel. That's all it comes back to. It's just Jesus.

That's literally it. Walk with Jesus. Show others how to walk with Jesus. We got to stop complicating it. It's not anything more than that. We're fooling ourselves if we think that it's about us, it's about an organization, it's about a specific person, it's about our deeds, it's about Jesus.

That's it. So that's my prayer for the church is that we will become a church that gets back to Jesus. So my deep prayer for the army is that we remember as people, and we remember who we are in God, that we will be physically stripped away, that we'll be emotionally... We will be stripped away, and we will only lean on God and be in His presence. In 2020, and this wasn't our idea, we borrowed it from someone else, we're doing a little prayer initiative where during the year 2020, we're asking soldiers of the Salvation Army, members of our congregation, to spend 20 minutes in prayer on the 20th of each month. And we have a devotional that will go with that time, and we're asking that all soldiers and Christians around the world come together for 20 minutes once a month during the year 2020 and just pray for our church. I mean, there's certainly other things that we should be praying for in 2020. We should certainly be praying for our country.

We have an important election. There's so many things, but God just really put it on my heart to ask people to pray for our church in 2020. I think if we were just talking about the Salvation Army, we have a huge opportunity to encourage the troops in June and start a fire or maybe stoke a fire with a Congress coming and just praying for sanctified imaginations, that people can get something from that and just let their imagination go and then return to their communities and turn up the heat in a sense for the kingdom, which would be great.

I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, for me, my prayer for the church was that we would get out of our way, that we would just get out of our own way, and that we would really not just say we recognize the marginalized people, but that we really recognize the marginalized people. We talked about Mary, that we would see them.

Even just planting seeds. Yeah, that's right. I went to lunch today with an officer friend, Rob Dolby, who had Grubburger here in Atlanta. When they... Fine dining establishment.

That's right, fine dining establishment. When this young woman delivered the two plates to us, she said, can I get you anything else? Rob immediately just said, well, we're going to pray.

Can we pray for you? She looked at him with his summer uniform on and said, well, this is for peace. So he made a very quick prayer to pray for our food and for peace for our waitress. I think that's really cool. It's not going to work everywhere you go or with every one that you cross, but in that moment, Rob just took advantage of it. It's connection. That's the whole thing we're talking about, how we connect with people. I wanted to... This may even sum it up a little bit.

This is for me, personally, as well as if I put my official cap on, what I'd look for for our army. I would look for 2020 to be an unquestioned yes here. Whatever it is that the Lord asks, yes. It's a hard thing to do, but whatever it is that you're asking, the answer is yes.

Just now give me the details. Whatever it is you want, the answer is yes. Wherever you'd like me to go, the answer is yes. Whoever you want me to speak to, the answer is yes.

Lord, it's inconvenient. I understand, but is there a yes in there somewhere? I would like this to be a yes here.

That doesn't preclude the unpleasant stuff that can happen in a year, but the Lord even leads us through that to make us who He wants us to be. Too many times in my own life, it's yes, but, or yes later, or can I get back to you? I'd like us to be yes people in the good sense of that phrase. That's a tall order, but we serve a Lord who tells us that the very Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is within us.

I'm thinking that yes is within our reach. I think, like you said, valuing God's people and Jesus, right? One thing that I love about my job is the opportunity to create relationships. I constantly get to meet new people, new people walking in the building.

This is not just my job either. I mean, every day who you interact with. I think that Jesus, I'm studying John right now. One of my hopes is that in studying John and seeing how Jesus lived and walked, that that would be something, Lord, how do I exemplify that? I think my prayer is just like, let's wake up as the church, as people. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a call to speaking of acts. Yes. Yeah. Speaking of acts. Yeah. Like a challenge to church leaders.

Start challenging. The church needs to start challenging their pastors and their peoples of leadership. And not just, we don't just go and expect to be fed in that way. Exactly.

No, you feed every morning, every night. Do we know the word? Right. Leaders. In regard to ministry, how can you minister when you don't have anything to pour out into people? You know what I'm saying? There's nothing wrong with taking a step back from ministry so that you can get right with the Holy Spirit. Because the last thing you want to do is lead people down the wrong path. You know what I'm saying? Lead people astray. Because what are you?

You're held to an even higher standard. I think that for 2020, although I like the year of Jubilee, I think 2020 and our prayer should be that the Lord will call us higher. Let me thank you for the opportunity to have you in my home and to share a little bit of Christmas with each other. You're going to invite us with food.

Come on. But I honestly sincerely believe that God has brought us all to this table for a reason and the things that we've shared with each other and the encouragement that I hope that we've given to each other will help others who may be going through the same experiences that we've been through. And I have to believe that there are people who are listening to this program who needed to hear, this is the year of the yes, who needed encouragement, who needed to know that Christ walked on this earth, that He came for them individually. Merry Christmas! Cheers! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad! Feliz Navidad!

I love you. For unto us a son is given. For unto us a child is born, glory in the highest. Our God is with us.

When all seems lost there's more to the story. Lift up your eyes to the God of unexpected glory. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support.

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