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Jubilee Fam,
During our 14th anniversary month, we have been thinking about our mission and vision for the years in front of us that the Lord has for us.
Our Mission: By God’s grace, we grow disciples who grow disciples.
Our Vision, what we hope to see if we are successful at the mission, is to see a forestry of oaks of righteousness, people across the generations, who 1) Glorify God in and through our lives; 2) Grow in our love for Christ and in our love for one another; and 3) Go, empowered by the Spirit; proclaiming the Lord’s Gospel favor to our neighbors and the nations through Gospel Words and Good Works.
On Sunday, Lord willing, we will talk strategy. How will we accomplish this mission by the grace our good Father supplies? For the rest of September, we will unpack ten strategic actions that will fuel the mission of growing disciples who grow disciples. One of those ten actions is to pray for our Triune God TOGETHER. This links perfectly with chapter 5 of Megan Hill’s book we are reading together — Praying Together: The Priority and Privilege of Prayer in Our Homes, Communities, and Churches. Notice how she links prayer and discipleship.
You probably learned to pray by praying with someone else. Maybe it was a parent whose mealtime and bedtime words of thanks and supplication still shape your prayers to this day. Maybe it was a pastor whose fervent praise from the pulpit first opened your eyes to the priority of delighting in God by prayer. Maybe it was a friend, someone who led you—phrase by phrase—in your first halting prayer of repentance and faith as you began your new life as a Christian. Praying together is a school for prayer (69).
Praying together is a loving act of Christian discipleship (69).
There cannot be a more brotherly office than to help one another in our prayers, and to excite our mutual devotion (70).
In praying together, we disciple one another: we strengthen one another’s faith, testify to our experiences of God, shape one another’s repentance and desires, stir one another to thanksgiving, and encourage one another in godly habits. In these things, too, we also help one another to resist various temptations to sin. Brothers and sisters, praying together is a school for the whole Christian life (70-71).
At the beginning of this chapter, I made the statement that praying together is more than just a school for prayer. As we have seen, praying together trains our hearts in faith, in Christian experience, and in repentance, desire, and thanksgiving. It is not merely a school for prayer, but it certainly is a school for prayer (79).
I can think of no better—or simpler—discipleship program than for more mature and less mature believers to sit diligently under the preaching of the Word and then to pray together. I can also think of nothing more exciting (80).
Brothers and sisters of Jubilee, praying is Discipleship 101, but let’s not fall into the ditch of only thinking of individual prayer. Let’s make it a norm at Jubilee that praying together is also Discipleship 101. Praying together is how we disciple one another as followers of the One from Nazareth!
Pastor Lew
P.S. Check out this short story of discipleship that started with an invitation and a trip to Dairy Queen — How Did I Start Following the One From Nazareth?