How to pray for your church leaders ?

                                                          

Your pastoral team needs your prayer

It is a blessing to call by God to lead the church. However, it is never an easy job for being a pastor or any leadership position in the church. For when the church is called by God to preach the gospel to the whole world, Satanic attack and human conflicts cannot be avoid. When being asked by someone that whose the leader people need to spend more time to pray for ? I would definitely say that it should always be the senior pastor of the church. For when we look at the bible , we know that no authority is not given by God. As a senior pastor, he or she needs to always be alert for the sheep. No just that , the senior pastor also needs to know what is the vision that God wants the church to go along with. At the same time, the senior pastor is the one who will face the most criticism and expectation from the whole congregation. And of course the senior pastor is the one who Satan wants to attack the most. For if the senior pastor happen to fall down on any trap of sin or leave the church for whatever hurtful  reasons, the church will be suffering from their lack of leadership and clear direction from God as well. So, be sure to pray for your senior pastor everyday whether you like this leader or not. For he or she is the chosen one from God lead the flocks of the church. At the same time , never participate in any gossip and criticism towards the senior pastor as well. For that will save you from falling into the trap of Satan who wants to see your church falling apart and lack of unity each day and night. On the other hand, it is also important to pray for all the pastoral staffs each and everyday. Since they are also called by God to assist the senior pastor and work as a team to lead the church as well, harmony and unity of the pastoral team will always be important for any church growth.

Your deacons and elders need your prayer 

We don't want to minimize the importance of deacons and elders in our prayer. However, their roles and function are different according to the Bible. There are many denomination will exalt their deacons board or the elders board as the highest decision making body in the church. Although we don't want to argue with this phenomenon, we don respect that each person do have different role to play in the church. The unity of such a leadership team is also important for the church as well. That's why we surely need to pray for them as well. 

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How to pray for these leaders ?

I would suggest the following seven ways to pray for the pastoral team and the leadership team as well and you should never underestimate the power of prayer :  

1. Apply the blood of Jesus to the senior pastor daily and ask the Holy Spirit to fill he or she that this leader will live in holiness and receive the love, wisdom, power, authority and vision from God to lead the church .

2. Apply the blood of Jesus to the pastoral team that this team will always work in harmony and unity with love. And also ask God to give them a heart of submission and love to the senior pastor and help the senior pastor to carry out any decision that needs to be execute in the church.

3. Pray for all the deacons and all the elders to have a spirit of co-operation and unity to work with the pastoral team in building up the church as a whole.

4. Ask God to give each member of the church to be humble and submissive to the leadership team of the church.

5. Bind all the spirits of any destructive idea, hatred, unforgiveness, bitterness , dis-unity, temptation , rebellious and any demonic attempt in Jesus name and command all these spirits be gone from the church in a daily basis. Also declare all the destruction for any Satanic plan to be completely destroyed and leave the church forever in Jesus mighty name.

6. Ask the Lord to send His angles to protect the leadership team and their family members in a daily basis as well.

7. Ask the Holy Spirit to always raise up new leaders in the next generation of this church and also ask God to raise mighty intercessors who knows how to listen to God;s voice and how to pray for the church in a daily basis to arise in this church.

Conclusion

The church in the end time needs to be more alert on how to pray for their leadership. God places each of us in a church is not a coincidence. He has a plan for each of us , so don't just leave your church whenever you feel like it. Your leaders are all human and they are not perfect, that's why they need your prayer in order to build up the church according to God's will. Will you be a prayer warrior for your church leadership team or will you be an attacker to your church leaders when you don't feel satisfy with anything ? I pray that you will know what to choose. Amen.

Prayer simply means communication with God

                                                               

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        There are many definition on prayer but to make it simple : Prayer is a communication process with God. When we talk about process, it really involve sender and receiver. We are the sender in the and God is the receive (at least in the beginning). Then it will make a 180 degree turns : God will be the sender and we will be the receiver. Let me explain about this process in the following.

1. We are the sender

We are the one who always request on prayer and we always ask God about this or that. Although prayer shouldn't be like that as (4:7 Phil) states that but practically speaking ask for God about something are what most Christians would do all the time.That's why we have a message to send to God whether that message is regarding to the need of solving a problem or dealing with a issue that we need help from God.

2. God is the receiver

When we pray to God , we definitely want Him to receive our message and for sure God will answer prayer all the time even the way he answer is not what we expected at all time. Sometimes, God will answer our prayer with things we have never thought of and always surprise us with more blessing.

3. God as a sender

God will answer our prayer with response and He wants us to receive His message. How can we receive God's message ? That begin another process of communication called "Listening To God". Although we have the Bible as our authority for God's answer and promises, God will also answer our prayer with some individual path according to our situation at that moment. That's why some people have reported that God has spoken to them through the following paths : dreams, visions, words of knowledge, prophetic word, Sermon, Bible verses, words of wisdom, angelic visitation, heaven (or sometimes even hell visit) experience and Jesus appear to individual as well.

4. We as a receiver

For sure God will answer our prayer but it is our responsibility to discern and responds in what we receive. We need discernment because the message can comes from 3 different resources : God or His angels, our own thinking and demons as well.That's why we need to discern the message and weight it with the Bible and confirmation from God (if it is not sure and without peace). At the same time, it is good to share the message with someone who has experience in listening to God and get more opinion from such a person.

Conclusion

prayer is a learning process and as tends to seek God with all our heart, we will growth through this learning process and get to know how God loves to communicate with us each and everyday.

Seven ways to listen to God's voice

                                                                                            

Do you realize that God is speaking to you in your daily life? 

I began to enjoy prayer after discovering that God responds when I pray. God can speak to us in many ways, but I will share seven ways that God used to speak to His people in the Bible.

1. 1. God will speak through dreams.

In the Book of Genesis, we find that God spoke to Abimelek through a dream to warn the king of Gerar about his attempt to marry Sarah, the wife of Abraham, just because he didn't know the truth. But God came to Abimelek in a dream one night and said to him, "You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman." (Genesis 20:3) Besides this instance, God also spoke in a dream to the magi in Jesus' time to warn them not to return to Herod, but told them to leave the country by another way.(Matthew 2:12). Yes, God will speak to us in a dream even today, so develop the habit of recalling your dream in your mind before you wake up (because once you wake up, you will probably forget it) and try to record it as soon as possible on your notepad or mobile phone before you forget it. It will be the first step to understanding what God is trying to communicate to you in your dream before you know the interpretation of it. 

     2. God will speak through visions.

The Spirit of God revealed a vision to the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 11:25). The prophet was being led to the exiles in Babylonia. Daniel also saw a vision of the Lord on the bank of the river Tigris during the time of Cyrus, king of Persia.(Daniel 10:7). Does God only speak to people with a vision in the Old Testament? No, look at Peter in Acts 10:9-16 and 11:5). In a vision, God spoke to the apostle about the gentiles also being welcome to the kingdom of God as well. 

     3. God will speak through the prophets, or people with prophetic gifts.

Without the prophets, we wouldn’t be able to understand God’s will at a particular moment of time, such as when God used the prophet Jonah to call for the repentance of the residents of Nineveh even though the prophet didn’t even want to go to this city in the beginning. The prophet Agapus passed a message of warning to the church that there was going to be a big feminine coming to the entire Roman world, so the church could prepare for all these issues when they finally came true in the reign of Claudius. (Acts 11:27-30) The Bible also mentions that there are nine spiritual gifts, and one of them is the gift of prophecy, or what some people would call a prophetic gift. That means God will frequently speak to a person and use that person to speak out to those whom He wants to speak to. The message will always be a personal message to an individual when it falls into the category of personal prophecy. 

    4. God will speak in a still small voice.

The Prophet Elijah will be a perfect example of God’s way of speaking to us. The prophet had just been through a big spiritual battle with all the false prophets on the mount of Carmel and fled from the life-threatening message from Jezebel. He just wanted to quit. However, when God restored his prophet, Elijah, he heard the Lord speak to him in a new way, "a still small voice," as the scriptures stated. (1 Kings 19:11-13)

   5. God will speak through angelic beings.

The Lord will use angels to speak to us whenever he wants to. For example, God used two angels to save Lot and his family before he wanted to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. (Genesis 19:1-17) God sent his angel to tell Joseph that he shouldn’t be afraid but should take Mary as his wife. (Matthew 1:20) 

   6. God will speak through animals.

God will sometimes use a funny way to speak to us when we don’t pay attention to what he says. For example, the Lord used a donkey to speak to Baalem when this prophet wasn’t listening to God. (Numbers 22:29 –31) Do you remember how God spoke to Jonah and drew his full attention to speak to him? By using a big fish, Jonah started to really listen to God in the belly of this big fish (whether it was a whale or not, we are not sure). For Elijah, God used the ravens to bring him food day and night to show God’s providence and care for him as well. (According to 1 Kings 17:2–6)

   7. God will speak through the scriptures.

(which is the most important and our standard of discernment as well.)

As the apostle Paul said, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Nothing is more important than God’s written word. Although there are many ways that God will speak to us, no voice or message can be contradicted with God’s words, and we should use this as a standard and measurement of all the voices and messages that are claimed to be from God. In order to do so, you will at least have to read your Bible every day and do your Bible study often. Otherwise, it will be difficult for you to know what the scripture says about the message you will encounter, whether in a church or with an individual.

Conclusion

There are many other ways that God will speak to his people as well. As long as God uses it, we need to be aware of how God speaks to us. Will God only use the Scripture to speak to us? In principle, yes. In our daily situation? No, we can’t limit God, since God uses a variety of different ways to speak to his servants in the bible as well. Some people may argue that since the canon hasn’t been completed in that period of history, God would use different ways to speak. However, after the canon has been established and the New Testament churches have been built on solid foundations, we don’t need any other ways to listen to God except the Bible alone. Again, I can’t agree with people like that since we can’t limit God and God loves to speak to us in his own way with his own strategy. Since we are all created differently, some would receive a message with a vision or a dream in a better way. Some would be born with a rational mind. That type of person may be better able to communicate in a more logical way or with a written message on a piece of paper. It really depends on whether you are a right-brained or left-brained dominant person. God knows what the best way is for you to receive his voice, and we should never narrow down how God speaks to us. He knows what will be best for us in terms of communication, so just yield to the Holy Spirit and experience God’s voice in a new way. Whenever you encounter difficulties in hearing God’s voice, it is a wise decision to pray for confirmation and see how God will confirm his voice with the scripture and also by your Christian mentor or pastor, who knows how to discern God’s voice as well. Hearing God’s voice is an exciting experience and also a life-long learning process. I pray that you will become more mature in your communication with God each and every day, and don't be afraid to make mistakes along the way. One tip I can give you is that the more you draw near to Jesus, the more you can discern his voice. As Jesus says clearly, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." (John 10:27) The more you draw near to Jesus, the more you know whether it is God’s voice or not. A sheep knows the voice of the shepherd due to their close relationship. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you in your communication with God, and I am sure your prayer will be rewarded.

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