40 Days of Prayer: February 10-March 21
"Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp."
- Exodus 33:7
At Trio, we have had a bourgeoning prayer effort for the past several months. We meet in coffee shops and homes, we call each other on the phone, we email each other with prayers, we even have a prayer conference call every couple of weeks. We feel a burden to pray for the church, and especially for God’s work in our midst, and we want to do so as a body. When Moses was in the desert with the Israelites, he used to go outside of the camp to a "tent of meeting" to pray. This was outside the regular worship and daily life of the camp. It's what we might call "extraordinary prayer". He set aside special times and places to seek the Lord and His face.
A few of us recently decided to enter a special time, 40 days to be exact, in a desire to seek God a little more specifically for Trio. But the more we talked, and prayed, the more we felt convinced that the whole church should be invited. We don’t want to perpetuate the notion that Central is a church with different groups and congregations “doing their own thing”. We are one body, the body of Christ, and we should seek Him as one body.
To that end, we will pray as a body for 40 days, from February 10-March 21, and we will be praying in 5 specific areas. I encourage you to find one or two others to huddle up with from time to time (phone, email, coffee shop, etc). It not only makes it easier to stay on track, it makes it more enjoyable. I will email you each day's prayer, and we will cycle through the following five areas:
1) God’s glory – that in all we do, not just in worship, but in thought, word, and deed, God would get glory, and that we would grow in our apprehension of it.
2) Our servant teams and volunteers (the “laborers for the harvest”) – that God would strengthen and encourage our faithful servants, and raise up many more!
3) For many souls to come to faith in Christ (the harvest itself) – and especially that we would become more and more a people who don’t wait for the lost to come through our doors, but go outside and invite them to come in. I encourage you to think of 2 or 3 people you know personally, and pray that God would help you to show them the love of Jesus. Making our prayers specific and personal helps us to become a part of the way God answers them.
4) Our community – that God would strengthen, flourish, and protect the body, our families, marriages, etc; that he would help us to be a friend, and not just look for a friend (again, praying specifically and personally).
5) God’s work in our midst – this is our way of acknowledging God’s sovereignty and asking Him to do what He wants to do with us; to help us to do and be what He would have us do and be; and also that He would teach us, shape us, guide us, and show us His will for the church.
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I look forward to meeting you, "outside the camp".
Yours in the Lamb,
Eric Stiller
Pastor of Trio
