The Miracle is in the House
From the Series: Miracles
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: May 16, 2010
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Transcript
Hello and welcome! We are thrilled that you are here. And I want to welcome those who are tuning in via podcast and webcast. We get a lot of emails from people all around the world. I got one this week that I want to share with you because we really believe that those who attend our five locations are immediate family, but those who tune in by podcast or webcast are part of our extended family. So, I’ll read this to you.
My name is Alex. I’m a Peace Corp volunteer in the West African country of Niger. Upon arrival, I discovered what it is like to be a Christian in a country where the population is over 90% Islamic with the nearest Christian community being a small church of 30 people about 50 kilometers from my village. I have my dad download podcasts of NCC sermons and I can’t begin to thank you enough for generously and unknowingly inviting me into your church family. Your podcast has been a great blessing to me as I struggle to find a Christian community that is so difficult to find here. God bless you and keep on podcasting the message. It is making a difference even out here in rural Africa.
I love our immediate family and I love our extended family. I thought it would be neat to share that.
This weekend we continue our ‘Miracle’ series. We are talking about the miracles of God multiplying the oil. If you have a Bible, turn to II Kings Chapter 4. I haven’t preached from the King James Version in a long time so is it cool if we read from the King James Version? This may be the first time ever at NCC, but sometimes old school is new school. King James Version it is. You can follow along on the screen. II Kings 4
1Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the LORD: and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen. 2And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil. 3Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few. 4And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full. 5So she went from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured out. 6And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed. 7Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.
Listen, there are some amazing principles in this package, so we are going to unpack it together this weekend. Let me say what I’ve been saying all along. All of us want a miracle, right? We just don’t want to be in situations that necessitate one. We do not want to be in this situation. We don’t know how her husband died, but this woman can’t even grieve the loss of her husband because she is about to lose her two sons. I think it is hard for us to comprehend this situation because we live in a culture where creditors don’t take our children. So this is a little foreign to us. Can you imagine losing your kids if you can’t pay your bills?
This week, I was having a conversation with someone that is going through bankruptcy and he told me that it has broken him up and there have been many occasions where he has literally wept because he doesn’t want to be there, but that’s where he is. So I’m thinking to myself that this woman can’t even file for bankruptcy. The way they would pay their debt in that culture is that her two sons would become slaves, or bondmen in the King James Version. I think what I’m saying is that here is a woman who is in a situation she does not want to be in. But sometimes it is those very situations where God works something miraculous in our lives. I think there is something here that I want you to see. If you are taking notes, jot this down, nowhere to go. Here is this woman who is in over her head, relationally, financially, emotionally, she is in a tough spot but she knows where to go, doesn’t she? She goes to the man of God. She goes to the prophet that her husband worked with. In a sense, what I’m saying is she goes to God. Isn’t it ironic that sometimes it takes these kinds of situations for us to actually turn to God? Sometimes the worst things that happen to you can be the best things that happen to you because what happens is you turn to the One who was there all along. He is there all the time, but sometimes it is only those situations where we need Him most that we actually turn to Him. And making that single discovery doesn’t just change our lives, it changes our eternity. So praise God for these kinds of situations.
2And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil.
How many of you know that sometimes we get a little focused on what we can’t do or what we don’t have? So she starts out saying she doesn’t have anything, but something jogs her memory or whatever and she remembers a pot of oil. She has this one resource, this one asset. I want you to know that everybody at all five of our locations, there is something in your possession that you may not even be aware of but if you use it for God’s glory, it might turn into a miracle. We are going to see that as we go through this story.
3Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few. 5So she went from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured out.
We can’t do miracles can we? It’s frustrating isn’t it? We can’t manufacture them and we can’t force God’s hand, but there are some things we can do to position us to experience the miraculous. Haven’t I been talking about this through the whole series? Let’s not worry about the miracles. Let’s not get focused on what only God can do, but let’s focus on putting ourselves in a position where God can do something miraculous. What I want you to see here is that sometimes it takes a step of faith. I’m sure this woman felt a little foolish borrowing all of these empty containers. She doesn’t need them, does she? She doesn’t need them based on the circumstances that she is in right now, because she just has a little pot of oil and she doesn’t know, but she takes a step of faith. That feels kind of weird, like asking for a cup of sugar from a neighbor, ya know? I don’t want to put them out or bother anybody, so I’m thinking she is probably a little self-conscience but she takes a step of faith and she borrows all these empty containers.
I’ve shared this story before. Part of NCC lore, if you will, during our first years of church, I led worship. I don’t have a great voice. So, for what it’s worth, I told Lora to play the keyboard really loud. So she would play really loud and I would sing quietly, but even worse than my voice is my rhythm. I have no rhythm whatsoever, and we didn’t have a drummer. Hey, can we stop and give it up for all of our worship bands at all of our locations? We didn’t even have a drummer and our worship was hurting and we were praying for God to give us a drummer. For months, we prayed for a drummer. Then let me tell you what happened. One day, I’m praying for a drummer and I feel this little impression that, I felt like God was telling me to go out and buy a drum set. It may not seem like a big deal, going out a buying a drum set just in case God sends a drummer, but here’s the financial situation. At that point, our total monthly income as a church was $2,000 a month and it cost $1,600 to rent the D.C. public school that we were renting, which left $400 for all other expenses. Do you want to guess how much the drum set cost? Exactly $400. I remember the day that I drove up to Silver Springs, Maryland, thinking this is crazy, using all our funds to buy a drum set and we don’t have a drummer. But by faith, I bought that drum set. It doesn’t always work out this way. I don’t bat 1,000 on this stuff, but that’s not going to keep me from continuing to take a step of faith. The very next Sunday, this guy walked in named Tony. Tony was over that barracks and he was in the drum and bugle core. We got our first drummer! He was an amazing drummer. I learned a valuable lesson, sometimes you’ve got to take a step of faith. It was literally a Field of Dreams moment, if you buy it, they will come. So I believed that and I just want to tell you that sometimes you need to take one small step and what will happen is it will turn into a giant leap. How many of you know that’s true? I could tell you a thousand stories. I’ve never had more fun, I’ve never been more excited about National Community Church, you have no idea how much I love serving as your pastor. I can’t believe I get to do this. I hope we get to do this for another 30 or 40 years together. I’m so grateful for what God is doing, but here’s the deal, I do look back on a critical moment, a critical step of faith. I was in seminary in Chicago and we thought we’d be there forever. I tried to plant a church and it didn’t work out the way we wanted, but here’s what we did, my roommate from college lived in D.C. and if he hadn’t lived in D.C., I don’t know. But we came to visit him and I’ll never forget driving down Pennsylvania Avenue wondering if this could be a place where we could live and do ministry. I kid you not, I feel like the God gave us a geographical calling to this place. So here’s what we did, we packed everything into a U-haul truck and we didn’t have any place to live, so we bunked with my roommate and his wife for a couple of days until we could find a place, but we didn’t have a guaranteed salary. But by faith, we took that one small step of faith, and it really turned into one giant leap. Here’s the deal, if you don’t bring that empty vessel, if you don’t go get it, go borrow it, if you don’t take that step of faith, then you don’t even put yourself in a position where God can fill it, where God can do something miraculous in your life. I promise you this, it will feel like a waste of time. It will feel like a waste of energy. Faith feels that way sometimes, but if you have the faith to do it, God might just provide in a miraculous way. That’s really what happens.
One other little observation. We read these stories as we read through the Bible together, and sometimes we read a couple of chapters and don’t really think about it, but here’s what I love about this widow. She goes and borrows the vessels without really knowing why. This is the most nonsensical, why would she even do that? Because God doesn’t reveal the outcome. God doesn’t say, ‘Because I’m going to fill it with oil.’ He doesn’t even tell her what He is going to do. So faith is not faith if you need to know the outcome. You just need to be obedient and take that first step of faith.
Here’s a way of thinking about it. I love the African impala. It’s a really cool animal and what I like about it is that it has amazing leaping ability. It can leap vertically leap about 10 feet and horizontally about 30 feet. That’s very impressive. Now, you would think that zookeepers would have a really hard time keeping these things in an enclosed space. How high do you have to build that wall? You know what? 3 feet is all need. Here’s why. An impala will not jump if it cannot see where it will land. I wonder how many of us are like that? I’ve got faith but I just need to see the outcome. That’s not faith. What did Abraham do? He went even though he did not know where he was going. That’s faith. Faith is borrowing a container and putting yourself out there, a little awkward, borrowing from neighbors, without knowing why God even wants you to do it. But you have the faith to do it and I promise, the first step is the hardest step. If you take that little step, I think here’s some good news, the miracle may only be a phone call away. It may only be one meeting away, or one application away. If we have the faith to take that step even when we don’t know the outcome, trust me, I know there is a process of prayer and discernment that goes into this. If you are going to get out of the boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, you want to make sure that Jesus said, ‘Come’ or you are going to look foolish. But if Jesus said, ‘Come’ you better not stay in the boat. You better take that little step of faith and you might just walk on water. That’s how it works.
You hear what I’m saying? It’s about positioning ourselves for those miracles and sometimes it takes a step of faith. While we are on the subject of positioning ourselves, we are in the middle of Pentecost fast, right? It began on May 13 and ends on May 23, Pentecost Sunday. Some of you forgot on Thursday. We still love you. Pray that you can still get to heaven! Ha-ha. I encourage you today to begin that Pentecost fast. We didn’t prescribe what we wanted you to do, I don’t know if that really matters, but here’s what I decided. It was really tricky for me because I’m a couple of weeks away from doing that Escape From Alcatraz swim with my daughter, so we are in intense training. Then we are hiking the Inca Trail later on in the month. For what it’s worth, I don’t do this stuff all the time. They just happen to be in the same month. So I’m training and I’ve got to be in shape so I knew I couldn’t do a complete fast, so I decided that I would eat one meal a day, and I could still sustain strength. And I am loving it! The first day, I feel like God gave me a verse to stand on, Matthew 4:4, Jesus is about to go into a 40-day season of fasting, and do you remember what the enemy does? The enemy will hit you where it hurts. What a sucker punch! He says turn this stone into bread. Jesus is starving. He can do it and reveal his miraculous power that way, but do you remember what Jesus said? ‘Man doesn’t live on bread alone but by every word that precedes from God.’ I feel like God gave me that word. Lord would You teach me more of what it means to live on your Word. Would You impart on my lessened caloric intake, would You sustain me in a way from your Word that would show me something now? Here’s what I love about this fast. The physical hunger that I experience during the day, it intensifies the spiritual hunger. That’s why we need to be fasting. I just wanted to make that observation. If we are talking about positioning ourselves for miracles, one way we do it is to take a step of faith, and another way is fasting. What a corollary with this story! What do you do when you fast? You empty yourself. And as you empty yourself, what does it do? It gives God something to fill, in a new and fresh way. So I want to encourage you, because some of you are really hungry today. You hang in there and keep pressing on. I believe God can do some miraculous things.
I think God has put something in my heart, that some of the greatest miracles we will ever experience as a church will be conceived during this ten days of fasting. That is what the Lord has put in my spirit. How exciting is that? Don’t mark my words, mark his Word. Mark his Word and we are going to trace it back to a season of fasting where God is going to do some miraculous things. Let’s keep going. I love this statement in verse 3:
Borrow not a few.
Borrow not a few. I remember a few years ago we did a fundraiser for missions and Pastor Joel, our Campus Pastor at Ballston, who is in Haiti right now with one of our missions teams. We have another team that left for Puerto Rico today. So isn’t this exciting! Pastor Joel has this huge heart for missions, so a couple of years ago, he came to me with this idea. We were going to go to Uganda to build an orphanage and he said here’s what I want to do. I want to give people pedometers and take pledges and walk for missions to raise money for it. I didn’t get it. I was like, ‘really?’ Then he said, ‘Do you think we should do 15,000 steps for $15,000, or should we do 30,000 steps for $30,000?’ I’m just keeping it real, I felt like we should do 0 steps for $0 because I wasn’t getting the concept. But thank God for a staff member who doesn’t listen to his lead pastor because he more faith than the lead pastor. But God had put it in his heart and I told him to do what God had put in his heart. So we did 30,000 steps for $30,000 and more than $50,000 came in. It was unbelievable! People all over the country were pledging and many of them were not even Christ-followers! But who can’t get behind building an orphanage for kids who don’t have a place to live? It was a miracle! It wasn’t just enough for one orphanage, it was enough for two. It was so awesome! I have often thought to myself, what if we had asked for $15,000? What do you think we would have gotten? I think we would have gotten as many containers as we put out there. I think many of us don’t put out enough empty containers. What does it say in the story? The oil kept flowing until they ran out of these empty containers. That’s why God says borrow not a few.
I’m convinced that one of our greatest shortcomings is the simple fact that we have such low expectations of the Almighty God. He is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine according to his power at work within us. The prophet Isaiah said, ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’ The prophet compares the difference between our ability and God’s ability to the expanse of the universe. Astrophysicists have discovered galaxies that are 15.5 billion light years away. To that into perspective, light travels 186,000 miles per second. That’s so fast, everybody snap your fingers. In the time it took to do that, light circumnavigated the globe 6 times in the snap of a finger! Wow! So it takes light traveling at 186,000 miles 15.5 billions years to reach the outer edges of the universe, that, by the way was created when God said four words: Let there be light.
What am I trying to say? I think we underestimate God, by about 15.5 billion light years. That our best thought on our best day is 15.5 billion light years short of how good and how great God really is. Amen! He is able!
But here’s the funny thing, we bring God three containers, and we get nervous wondering if He can fill them. Seriously? Let’s try 300 or 3,000. Here’s what I want you to see. Sometimes we feel like we might offend God if we make the big ask. My friends, it is the exact opposite. God is offended when we think of Him in human terms and just ask Him to do what is like barely human possible. God doesn’t honor that. He doesn’t love that. He loves it when someone has enough faith to say, ‘God I have no idea how and I don’t understand that outcome but I’m going to believe You in a big way to do something that is way beyond what I can believe.’ God loves your faith. We need to keep stretching ourselves and believing God and borrow not a few.
Then it says, she poured out. She poured out.
If you want God to continue providing, you need to keep pouring. As long as you keep pouring, I think the blessing will keep flowing. Let me put it in NCC terms. One of our deepest held convictions is that God will bless us in proportion to how we give to missions. We are going to keep giving more, and more. You know we want to grow more so we can give more. Our 20/20 vision of 20 locations, that’s not what it is about, it is about the 2 million we want to be giving annually to missions. I just happen to believe that as long as we continue to pour out, God will continue to bless us. I believe that personally and I believe that corporately. So, what do we need to keep doing? We need to keep pouring out.
Let me adapt this because I think this is a helpful way of thinking about it. Two years ago, we set a goal of taking 10 missions trips and I remember when we set that goal, I wondered if we could pull it off. And there was a temptation going into this year, should we dial it back a little bit, that’s a stretch, should we kick back a little bit? But I think God wanted us to dial it up a little bit. So we will take more than 10 trips this year. What I’m saying is we are going to keep pouring ourselves out. I was thinking about it. Can you imagine a day when we, as a church, are taking like 52 missions trip a year? Every week of the year, we have people going out and sharing the good news of the gospel and we are pouring ourselves out that way. Can you imagine? Do you want to believe with me to be part of that kind of miracle and that kind of church? We care so much for the lost that we are going to keep pouring ourselves out. I believe that is what God is going to do in us and through us.
Here’s another way that we are going to keep pouring out. It was only a few weeks ago, Easter Sunday, that we launched our 5th location at the Gala Theater in Columbia Heights and we are still celebrating and getting it off the ground, but we are not going to get comfortable. Guess what? I want to tell you where our 6th location is going to be. You want to hear? Now, let me say that we don’t know the time line yet, it may be the end of June or the beginning of September, so we don’t know when but we know where. Can I get a drum roll? Potomac Yard in Crystal City. You can clap for that! We have been praying for that for the longest time. I don’t know if you remember, but when we surveyed our congregation last December, Potomac Yard was one of the places that we put out there, and we had 121 people saying count me in! But the timing wasn’t there, but God has opened that door and we are going to walk through it. We are not doing it because we need one more thing to do. Honestly, we are not doing it because we have too many volunteers. But I believe God fills vacuums. This is a theological deal but the very last description of God in Ephesians 1, the last verse, it describes God as Him who fills everything in every way. Isn’t that interesting? That is profound. I can’t go into depth but it is the very nature of God to fill voids and vacuums. By the way, your body is one of those things. It is the temple of the Holy Spirit and God wants to fill it with his Spirit because it is the nature of God to fill everything with Himself, not just creation but you. He wants to fill you with his Spirit. So I believe that if we launch new locations, what we do is we create vacuums, and by creating vacuums, we create opportunities where God can move in and do something miraculous. If we keep pouring ourselves out, we are going to see tens of thousands of people come to faith in Jesus Christ! That is miraculous. We are going to keep pouring ourselves out.
We will double-back with more details in a few weeks as we figure out the timeline and we will pop the question that we always ask, to pray about whether God wants you to stay committed at your current location or be a part of the new location. So we will get there, but we want to give you an opportunity this weekend to be part of a miracle. Would you like to be part of the miracle? In this story, we focus on the widow, but I don’t know that she is the hero. I don’t know that the real heroes aren’t the friends and families and neighbors who gave her their empty vessels. Here’s what I want you to see because here’s the deal, if they don’t give her the empty vessels, the miracle doesn’t happen! So they are all collectively a part of this miracle. They make the miracle possible. I believe that this weekend and next weekend we are going to make a miracle possible. When I say miracle, I’m not talking about launching the sixth location, I’m talking about the people who will walk into that location and find a relationship with Jesus Christ that will change their life and change their eternity. That is the miracle we are believing for and I believe all of us have an opportunity to be part of it. How? We are not just going to talk about this, we are going to give everybody an opportunity to be part of it. So let me let you in to some of the inner-workings, especially if you are new to NCC, in terms of how we think about locations and launch locations. You need to know that we don’t budget for them. You might be sitting there thinking that’s a bad idea. That might sound like financial foolishness, but I want to tell you that it is financial faith. It is the way we’ve always done and the way we always will. Why? Because we want to put ourselves in a situation that as we step out in faith and pursue what God is calling us to do, that we have enough faith to believe that God is going to provide a miracle and that we will be able to do this thing. I love that and that’s how I want to live my life. I want to back myself into a corner and say, ‘Alright, God, unless You come through, it is not going to happen.’ But it is going to happen, and here is how it is going to happen.
Next weekend, we want to invite you to bring empty vessels. Not actually empty vessels because that would be really weird. I want to invite you to bring a gift. I don’t care if it’s cash or check, but we want to invite everybody to bring an empty vessel and be part of the miracle that I believe is going to happen. I’m excited about this. Here we go with the money grab and some of you are new and you may not know how we operate and you may not know the spirit with which we operate, and I want to promise you today that God does not need your money, but you need to give. Why? I’m just speaking out of personal experience, if I don’t tithe, greed will get a stranglehold on my heart and it will choke the generosity out of my life. So when I tithe, I feel like I’m bringing God an empty vessel because I believe God can do more with 90% than I can do with 100%. Sometimes we need to do the subtraction so God can do the multiplication. Isn’t that what happens here? God does the multiplication but sometimes we need to do the addition and the subtraction. So, again, I want you to position yourself. I believe that one way you position yourself for the miracles of God is obedience and one form of obedience is tithing. As we tithe, we bring an empty vessel to the Lord and God blesses it. What I’m talking about is really us coming and it’s not about how much we give. Some of you have a lot and some of you have a little, I just want to believe that all of us are going to be shareholders. I just don’t want it to happen and you miss out on the miracle if you weren’t part of it. I want to be part of the miracle. I can’t wait to write a check and be part of the miracle and see people come to faith in Christ and know that I’m a shareholder in their eternity. It doesn’t matter whether you only have $50 or $100, some of you may be able to give $1,000, some of you could give 10 or 25 percent of what we are talking about here. You could be a serious shareholder in this miracle, but I believe that next weekend, we will have the largest offering in the history of National Community Church, for the glory of God. Here’s why this is so cool. What’s next weekend? It’s Pentecost. And what’s Pentecost? It’s the birthday of the church. And what we talking about? We are talking about birthing our 6th location! So I don’t care whether you call it a miracle offering or a birthday gift. It dawned on me as I was praying this week, I was like, Oh Lord this is so cool to do this on the birthday of the church. I don’t know if anybody has ever done this. Maybe we are the first church to actually bring birthday gifts on the birthday of the church. I think it is going to be awesome. So here’s the deal, there is not a two-year capital campaign, I’m not going to preach on it for three months, I’m going to remind you next week and I believe that as you think about it and pray about it, that God is going to lead you. We will remind you next week and then the week after that, we will remind you of what God did, and that’s it. It’s not complicated. But I want to invite everybody to get in on this miracle.
Let me close with this. I think sometimes the obvious eludes us. Here is the big thing in this story. I think there are a lot of sub-points, position yourself, borrow not a few, keep pouring yourself out, but here’s the big thing in this story that I love. The miracle is in the house. See, I think sometimes we want to look anywhere and everywhere, like where is the miracle? Is it over here or over there or halfway around the world? That is not where the miracle is. I think sometimes we have the ability to be a miracle in someone else’s life and it is an asset that we already have, it’s just something that we haven’t identified or we haven’t thought through it. I want to challenge us today because we don’t just give to give. When we do our missions catalogue every Christmas and you are buying bricks for an orphanage in Uganda or you are buying goats for a village in Ethiopia or you are buying tuition to help get some girls off the street in Thailand, what is your gift? It is not a gift to them, it is a miracle to them. When we give that gift, it translates into a miracle in their lives. So we’ve got to think in that category.
Listen, I believe that the miracle is in the house. I believe that everything God wants to do is right here at our five locations, it is right here. How do I know that? I think it is the principle in this passage. We’ve experienced it before and we will experience it again. Let me close with this story because I think it is one small story that really speaks to this whole idea that the miracle is in the house.
I got an email from an NCCer who attends our Georgetown location. Every location is getting in on the miracle. Miracles are happening all over the place. This NCCer just got back from a missions trip to Israel, just returned a week ago. They sent this email right before leaving on the trip and gave me permission to share it, so here it is.
Yesterday I was one of the last three people to leave church and the three of us decided to try a secret burrito place (more on that at the end). The place wasn’t open so we walked to a sandwich shop a couple of blocks away, and after we ate, my friend looked at me intently and said, ‘We just wanted to tell you that on the way here, we felt led to help you out with your mission trip and we just donated $2,000 toward it.’ I was literally speechless, for the second or third time in my life. I had no idea how to comprehend this. I had never experienced this kind of generosity. To know that you have friends that can channel God’s miracles. Do you know that you will encounter people this week who have a need that you could meet miraculously? Channel God’s miracles. In an incredible peace of knowledge that brings comfort and awe at the same time. I feel blessed, overwhelmed, joy, affirmation, unworthy, and most of all, thankful. I know that they were giving to God and God was giving to me. But for us to be involved in a godly transaction like that is truly remarkable. I might even say miraculous.
I believe that God wants to us each one of us to be part of this miracle. That’s an exciting thing. I better share this. This is no way to end a message but it’s called the Well-dressed Burrito. It consists of two signs in a solid windowless black door. This is really for our Georgetown location but if you want to venture, it says there are no windows and no other signs other than the one that says Well-dressed Burrito with a penguin on it, located in an alley between 19th and 20th Street in northwest D.C. It is only open Monday to Saturday, not Sundays, as we learned the hard way, and people say that it is the best burrito in the world and that the lines can reach around the block during lunch hour. We are a full-service church! That’s what I’m saying!
My friends, every time we give, it is a godly transaction. Every time we pour ourselves out, we are that empty vessel and we are channeling the miracles of God. I believe that for each and every one of us. Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank You, we love You, we praise You, we exalt You. God we have a holy anticipation at the way You are working in people’s lives. Lord I thank You for the miracles that are happening. I think of this one story and the way it made this trip possible and God I think about all the other miracles happening around here. We celebrate and rejoice but we aren’t satisfied. We believe that You are a God who wants to do bigger and better miracles. God, we confess that sometimes we get so comfortable and sometimes we dial it back when You want to dial it up and You want to do something even greater, so God forgive our spiritual apathy and give us a holy desire to seek your face and to experience You in new ways and that there would be new dimensions in our lives of your grace and your power flowing in us and through us. God I pray that You would do something in us unprecedented, that You would do something in our hearts and lives that would be beyond what we are even praying for. God we can’t see the outcome but by faith, we position ourselves and by faith we want to step out in obedience and do that thing that You have called us to do. God, I pray for the corporate miracle next weekend as we bring our empty vessels, as we bring a gift to invest in this miracle of our 6th location. We anticipate what You are going to do. I pray for each of us individually, especially those in the tough situations like this widow who are at the end of themselves, I pray that they would know where to go. We turn to You right now and ask You to do the miraculous in our lives for your glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
