Jim Bates is a family man, pastor, evangelist, missionary, pro-life colleague and friend who, among all of his other services for the Lord Jesus, blogs over at Prophet 21. I was particularly moved by the wisdom of three prayer requests he recently described on his blog and I believe you might be as well.The Church on earth is only an imperfect manifestation of the one, true and invisible Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet we are promised by Jesus that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. In some lands there are hundreds of thousands of congregations and in others maybe only one or two. The wheat and the tares are mixed, the divisions and weaknesses are all too plain and obvious, yet the Holy Spirit is working in and through the Church in all its diversity of doctrines, denominations, languages and personalities. It is through the Church that God wants redemption to be proclaimed to mankind.
And so I present you with these three prayer request for the Church.
1) Maintaining a clear witness to the uniqueness of Christ in the midst of a growing religious pluralism, non-Christian religious revival, urbanization, modernity and relativism. Christians will be increasingly criticized for being "intolerant".
2) Sustaining the centrality of the Scriptures in today's world at a time when many Evangelicals in the West are becoming less firm in their convictions. Too often believers' thoughts, prejudices and fears are moulded more by the prevailing culture, philosophies, superstitions and religions of the society around them than by the Bible. Humanism in the West, Hinduism in India, etc., are examples. All such can rob Christians of their assurance, power and joy in the face of a hostile world, and side-track believers into focusing on secondary or irrelevant issues.
3) The effective functioning of local congregations. Each should be an organism, a body. Each member has gifts to contribute to the up-building of the whole, yet rarely do congregations function in this way. This emphasis on "body life" has come into prominence in the past three decades. New, innovative models of 'church' and its ministry are emerging. May every congregation be an effective body through which the Holy Spirit can work.
