How You Can Pray for: A Call To Pray for Revival and Awakening, A Gathering For Senior Pastors
From September 30 at 6:30 p.m. through October 1 at 12:00 p.m., 178 Senior Pastors from 25 states across our country will be gathering for serious prayer and intercession relating to revival and awakening in the lives of pastors, churches, and our nation. We believe God is calling Pastors to stand in the gap for His people about revival and awakening. We are praying that if God so wills, this gathering could become the catalyst for the next great move of God in our land.
Interest continues to grow
The interest continues to grow for this prayer gathering. If airline costs were more reasonable, there is no telling how many people would be able to attend. Our rooms are sold out, but there is still space for a few more to participate in the prayer gathering, even though you may have to stay in another hotel. You can register to participate in this prayer gathering here.
How you can pray for this gathering
This is a gathering for Senior Pastors of Southern Baptist churches. By no means is exclusivity our goal, but we really felt we needed to begin with Senior Pastors of local churches with the commonality of pastoring Southern Baptist churches.
I have been asked how laypeople and other pastors can pray for us. Some churches are organizing to pray for our gathering. They realize the significance of pastors from across the nation coming together for the purpose of praying for revival and awakening. Therefore, let me offer a few suggestions:
- Pray for God to give us a vision for spiritual revival and awakening.
- Pray for God to give us a burden for spiritual revival and awakening.
- Pray for God to reveal sin and the need for personal repentance.
- Pray for God to lead us to the filling of His Spirit and all the fullness He brings.
- Pray for the Lord to revive His pastors, His church, and awaken America.
- Pray for God to use our prayer gathering to speak to us and use us in any capacity as a catalyst for national revival and awakening.
- Pray for God to empower our pastors to pray for and move towards the ultimate fulfillment of the Great Commission: presenting the gospel to the entire world and making disciples of all the nations.
Dear friends, use this as a few thoughts to pray, but overall, pray as God directs you. We mainly need you to pray, and pray more for this gathering. We want to see God do a great work among and through us.
Finally
Pray for me. I have a real blessing, but an enormous challenge before me in leading and facilitating this gathering. Will you pray for me? I must be able to listen to God and move our gathering to where He desires us to go. We will be Word-based and Christ-centered, but we also want to be Spirit-led. I want us to follow God. These 178 pastors from 25 states are not coming to Southlake, Texas (DFW Region) for a preaching conference, but for a real, live-action prayer gathering. We are gathering to pray. Therefore, I confess humbly: I really need you to pray for me. Thanks for joining us in this prayer journey.
Yours for the Great Commission,
Ronnie W. Floyd
Dr. Ronnie Floyd is the President & CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee.
Good News We All Need
Do you ever get tired of bad news? The mantra “If it bleeds, it leads” spills over into our surrounding culture and we find ourselves neck deep in murder, war, greed, malice and unfaithfulness. At times, it seems no good news is to be found.
It may seem we live in times worse than any that have come before. This, most likely, is not the case.
God’s original creation was perfect in every way. After six days and an evaluation of “very good,” He rested. Adam had all he could want except a wife, a predicament God soon remedied. All they could eat, all they could drink, perfect harmony with each other and their surroundings, and daily fellowship with God.
That was good news.
Until they fell to temptation, bringing a curse upon all that God had made.
Since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, humanity has been dealing with the effects of sin. Nothing, absolutely nothing, has escaped sin’s reach. Humanity is tainted, animal life is tainted, and plant life is tainted. From atoms to universes, God created it all. From atoms to universes, sin has affected it all.
This is bad news.
Ben Mandrell, writing in Do Over: New Life in Christ, said it this way:
The bottom line: humanity has no hope from within. This is a problem you and I cannot solve. Someone must break into this jail and show us the way out. Paul has backed us into a cold cell, the bars coldly locked into place. He has our attention. No one is righteous—not even you. Thankfully, there is a solution.
In other words, the bad news is not the final news. There is good news.
From the earliest of Jesus’ ministry He used this phrase to describe what people needed to believe in order to be reconciled to God: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news!” (Mark 1:15). The core of Jesus’ ministry is described by it: “Then Jesus went to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness” (Matthew 9:35). In remembrance of Jesus’ ministry and message the apostle Paul wrote, “Now brothers, I want to clarify for you the gospel [“good news”] I proclaimed to you; you received it and have taken your stand on it” (1 Corinthians 15:1).
There is good news, but what is it, exactly?
Paul continues, “For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3, 4).
Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection constitute the core of the gospel message—the good news. Our response to the good news is belief, as Jesus stated. Paul echoes, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16).
Christ’s offer of salvation is the foundation for regaining everything lost in Adam and Eve’s fall. Helping men, women, boys and girls realize this, helping them hear and understand Christ’s offer of salvation, is the goal of Bible Studies for Life.
Yours for the Great Commission,
Ronnie W. Floyd
Senior Pastor, Cross Church
General Editor, Bible Studies for Life
Dr. Ronnie Floyd is the President & CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee.