Pray. Ask the Lord to bring several unconverted friends' names to your heart. Pray earnestly for their salvation.
#2 | FRIENDS
Invite your friend(s) to come to church with you at least one Sunday between March and May. Preferrably more than that.
#3 | GRACE
The preaching pastors are committing to the body to be seeking the
Lord's face to preach as clearly and simply the whole gospel each
Sunday, including the bible's instruction for how one must respond.
Pray for us!
#4 | LUNCH
When you invite your friend to church, arrange also to host him/her/them for lunch the Sunday they attend.
#5 | MEMBERS
Invite a fellow Grace member/family to join you for lunch to help with
meal preparations, build a new relationship, pray, and to help commend
Christ during the lunch conversation. Don't let living far away stop
you from being involved. Talk to someone else in the body, and figure
it out together.
#6 | GOSPEL
Launching from the morning's sermon, or however you can get there,
turn the conversation toward the gospel. Explain God's Jesus-centered
saving truth. Welcome questions and dialogue. Lovingly call for
repentance and faith. Seek to arrange 4 to 5 times in the next 2-3
months to read the gospel of Mark (independently) and talk about it (together).
#7 | REPEAT
Repeat the entire process until God says stop (i.e. When you get to heaven).
Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so
magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued
investigation of the great suject of the Deity. Would you lose your
sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the
Godheads's deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come
forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know
nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of
sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout
musing upon the subject of the Godhead.
“Let us mark…how Christ indicates that when His joy abides in us our joy is full (John 15:11).
Joy depends much less on what we have, than on
what we are. You may give me this and that, and everything that can be thought
of, yet in my soul there be no wave of joy.
But change
me inwardly; make me like
Jesus; let me, like Him,
hate wickedness and love righteousness with the whole force of my nature; let
me abide, like Him, in the
Father’s love; let my heart, like His,
flow over with loving feelings on every side; let me, like Him, delight in doing God’s will, and in finishing, day
by day, the work given me to do; let me, like
Him, live in expectation of the glory that is to be revealed when He
appears with His holy angels, when His redeemed are all gathered from east and
from the west, from the north and from the south; then shall not my joy be
pure, deep, and real? Shall my joy not even now be unspeakable and full of
glory?”
William Garden Blaikie’s, The Inner Life of our Lord, 97-98.
When the vantage point of our prayer is lined up with Christ's worth, we will quickly find more expectation in our praying and true transformation in our lives.
Prayer can be empty, and often is, but it doesn't have to be. We should expect our Father's...
“The
lighter forms of joy, when they involve no sin, need not be banished from our
life—bodily recreation, social mirth, lively books and lively conversation. But
their place will be secondary; the great fountain will be Christ’s fountain.
Nay, we will be jealous over ourselves with godly jealousy, lest we so drink of
lighter joys of life as to spoil our relish for the deeper river that makes
glad the city of our God.” - William Garden Blaikie, Glimpses of the Inner Life of our Lord, 98.