EvangelismCoach

intercessor

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Praying for a church Plant

As mentioned in the last post on Evangelism Prayer List, our family is participating in planting a new multi-national church in our city.   I am not the lead pastor as the focus on our ministry is evangelism training in the Americas.

When I lived in Richmond, I participated in an international church plant with a team of pastors and that church is 7-8 years old now.

We know that a combination of prayer and passion will help this church get launched.  We are not at the place of having public meetings, but our plan is to move in that direction this year.

Here is the initial launching team, planning out our strategies for prayer, fasting, prayer walking, and evangelistic prayer for our friends.

Our New Church Developmnet

We dream of a church:

  • Passionate for God, full of faith and life.
  • Passionate for Worship and Intercession.
  • Passionate for people
  • Passionate for evangelism
  • Passionate to influence the culture.
  • Passionate to grow through Small Groups
  • Passionate to grow and develop a strong leadership to impact our culture.
  • Passionate to mobilize leadership to plant churches for people without church.

 

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Evangelism Training Ministry in Nicaragua

Martha Tinoco - Vida Joven Staff

Vida Joven Leader Martha Tinoco (pictured standing right) wrote in a note to us after the event with them last year:

Thanks for sharing with us. You are an example for my life. I can see how [your team] works in unity, love, and respect. I saw the presence of God in your lives, as great servants of God, with great gifts. I don’t have enough words to express our thanks! – M Tinoco, Vida Joven, Matagalpa, Nicaragua, December 2007.

Leave Your Weapons at the Door:

Imagine proclaiming Christ among:

  • Some of the poorest social conditions in Latin America.
  • Poverty, gangs, crime, and lack of available food.
  • Helping those victimized by wars, crime and abuse find faith in Christ.
  • Sexual, physical, and verbal abuse.
  • Broken family systems where one might have 18 – 25 half siblings.
  • Living on a garbage landfill recycling scrap metals.

One club leader has a policy:

If you come to our bible study, leave your weapons at the door.

Other leaders have already served time in jail for crimes they committed before finding Christ and now want to go back to their gangs and proclaim the gospel.

Vida Joven

Vida Joven Nicaragua has been ministering in this context for over 15 years in Nicaragua, proclaiming and demonstrating the love of Jesus. Each year in the mountains outside of Matagalpa Nicaragua, their leadership gathers for an intense week of training, encouragement, and refreshment.

Proclaiming the love of Jesus in such areas can be dangerous work: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

The camp gives the leadership opportunity to heal, forgive, and grow.

I have been on two trips to provide leadership training. Two issues routinely come up:

  1. How do the leaders find healing for the personal junk in their lives?
  2. How can they minister to the broken who are coming to faith in Christ and want to find the healing of their own wounds?

Last Year’s Nicaragua Team

The Team with Omar
The Team with Omar

Last year, a leader said to me:

“It’s good to have a cry fest here and get things solved, but some of these healings have to go much deeper. We simply don’t have the trained staff here to do it.”

I was with a team from PRMI (Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International) who went to Nicaragua.

We presented on worldview, who is the Holy Spirit, the four works of the Holy Spirit, how to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and then how to listen to the voice of God. This material is the basis of Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International’s Ignite Project.

We had the teaching slides translated into Spanish, and had more material than we could cover in our limited time.

A New Team

Vida Joven Farm
Vida Joven Landscape

This January, another team from PRMI will be going to the Vida Joven Camp outside of Matagalpa to help address this need.

I will be part of this team.

We will use the basic material found in the healing Dunamis from PRMI that has made a countless impact around the world.

I look forward to meeting the leaders again and sharing with them tools that can help their evangelism. It is our family’s desire to help these leaders grow more effective in their evangelistic calling by equipping them with some skills in trusting the Holy Spirit to bring the healing of Jesus.

Evangelism can be messy!

Ministering in a context like this can be really messy —

  • abuse victims suddenly dealing with their issues,
  • hearing stories of being gang raped,
  • infected with veneral diseases,
  • wounding from assaults,
  • or filled with hatred because a sibling was killed in a gang.

Very different ministry context than suburban north American culture where I ministered for 11 years, where people stress about their 401(k)s and the economy.

We’d like to offer help and training to the advanced leadership team of Vida Joven so that they can be equipped in the power of the Holy Spirit to help in the healing work of Jesus in this local context.

How can you help?

1. Prayer.

This is spiritually challenging work and we need significant prayer covering. I’d like you to contact me to be put on the intercessors list for this event.

2. Finances.

Donate Via Check? Mark Latin American Missions, payable to PRMI, Mail to PRMI P.O.Box 429 Black Mountain NC 28711

Note: This project is different than our montly support for our ministry. Funds for will be used for team expenses which includes my airfare. Any overages will be used for PRMI’s other Latin American callings and as seed money for future PRMI teams to Latin America.

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What is Spiritual Thirst?

To read prior parts:

This started as part of a conversation over at Evangelism Action, but will take much more than just a comment to tease out.

Spiritual Thirst propels a search

Spiritual thirst is a way of describing a person’s own search for God.

What motivates a person to seek after God?

Source: Flickr
Source: Flickr

In the parable of the merchant searching for the fine pearl — he is propelled to find it because he knows it’s out there. He looks, and looks, and looks.

There is a “thirst” to propel him to find it. When he doesn’t find it, he keeps looking. When he finds it, he has that “Eureka” moment.

If you are noticing people, spiritual thirst can lead to moments of conversation in divine appointments.

Spiritual Thirst in Athens

While wandering around Athens (Acts 17), Paul gets a sense of the spiritual thirst of the Athenians. He even appreciates their thirst, in complementing them on the quest for God. He says “I see that you are very religious . . . I found an altar to an unknown God.”

He has picked up on their spiritual thirst – the desire to know God.

When Paul was in Athens, he must have said something that brought them to the point of asking “May we hear you more about this matter?” (v.19)

They were thirsty for more information, self-propelled to learn more. Paul saw they were thirsty (manifested in the all the statues, including an altar to an unknown God).

He started where they were.

The Spiritual Thirst of the Eunuch

The Ethiopian Eunuch was spiritually thirsty.

He had gone to Jerusalem for a worship event to connect with God, yet it wasn’t satisfying enough.

On the way home was reading Isaiah.

He’s spiritually thirsty, knowing that he hadn’t found it yet. By God’s sovereign grace (working both sides of the equation), Phillip was there to explain. The Ethiopian found it — wanted to be baptized. Phillips explanation slaked that spiritual thirst.

(Listen to an audio sermon download on Phillip and the Ethiopian)

Spiritual Thirst yearns for the Water of Life.

Spiritual thirst is the underlying motive that people have to seek after God, to start and continue their search for God.

It could be guilt over sin, it could be a longing for honest community, it could be guidance and direction, among some ideas.

It could be a stark realization that the person has made a giant mess of their life.

The gospel can speak to each one of these.

Let me ask you this?
What “spiritual thirst” have you encountered in the people that you talk with?

Well Water Image Source: Flickr, Department for International Development

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Does your heart get distressed over the lost?

In Acts 17:16, Paul is waiting around Athens, waiting for his friends to arrive, passing time doing the tourism thing.

He notices all

  • their idols,
  • the architecture,
  • the statues,
  • smells and sounds of the city.

I can imagine the awe he felt at the architecture, the beauty of the art, and how the noises of the city may have reminded him of his own home.

Source: Flickr, Mircrobe
Source: Flickr, Mircrobe

I’ve been a tourist in many a foreign city and always enjoy trying to learn about the culture where I go. I can imagine some of the feelings Paul felt, some of sounds that he heard, and some of the sights and smells he experienced.

Athens Full of Idols

As he wandered around the city, he notices that the city was “full of idols.”

The NIV says he was “Greatly distressed.”

The Greek word implies an emotional reaction to what he saw.

It is used only 2 times in the New Testament (the other time at 1 Cor 13.5).

It means “to be upset, angered, irritated, or distressed” (Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains).

Idiomatically, it can mean “his heart was eating him.”

That’s a large range of emotions.

You can be

  • upset with grief,
  • angered at a wrong,
  • irritated by obnoxious things, or
  • distressed with fret.

English gives this word a large range of emotional meaning.

The Burden an Intercessor Feels

But what is clear is that Paul got emotionally worked up, so to speak.

Their spiritual blindness didn’t just bother him, it aroused his passions.  I can imagine that as he looked them over, he saw how spiritually thirsty the people were. (See What is Spiritual Thirst?)

I can imagine the burden on his heart. To see these people yearning to know God, yet caught up in idolatry.

I can imagine that Paul,

  • who has tasted the joy of the grace of God,
  • who had Jesus speak to him on the road to Damascus,
  • who enjoys a passionate relationship with God,
  • who has known the love of Jesus,

was saddened that these Greeks had not yet discovered the same grace of God.

To see their spiritual blindness must have grieved his heart. That is what I imagine to be his “great distress.”

  • A grief that they have not experienced God’s grace.
  • A sorrow for their spiritual blindness.
  • An holy anger that not enough has been done fast enough to share about Christ.

What I imagine [it’s not in the text between verses 16 and 17] is that this drove Paul to prayer.

  • Praying for the gospel to go forth.
  • Praying to be used in sharing his faith.
  • Praying that their eyes would be open to God’s grace.
  • Praying that God would make His offer of grace totally irresistible.

This is what happens to me, which is why I can imagine it happening to Paul.

I associate this grief and distress as an intercessory burden for those who do not know Christ. It fuels me for evangelism, which is what Paul begins to do.

Let me ask you this?

If you know and have experienced the grace of God, does your heart get worked up when you see the spiritual blindness of others? What do you do?

What happens next?

When you start praying for people, you’ll begin to have conversations with them about your faith.  This is where many people struggle.

This teaching set (download or DVD) can help you have more effective conversations with people when you discern where they are in their spiritual journey.  Knowing where they are can help relieve the pressure of any conversation about Christ.  Click the banner to read more on how to get this training to help you have better faith sharing conversations

 

Image of Athens: Flicker, Microbe

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