weekly email to friends and family of Life Connection Church in Euless, TX
Dear Friends,
I hope this note finds you well…..Our Mission Team in Chicago is finishing up and will be heading back. Please pray for their safety and comfort as they travel. It has been a good trip. Lives have been changed both for those who are serving and in the receivers of God’s love with skin. I have been getting some pretty regular texts from our travelers. Brent has written a few great entries at http://brents.tumblr.com/ Go there and check it out. They are bringing back some great stories and some wonderful pictures. They will be home late on Saturday night.
If you have a motorcycle, Mornings are the best time to ride during this current Texas heat wave. Lets ride to church on Sunday morning. By the time you get home for lunch the temp will be rising and you can park it in the shade, and know, you had a great Sunday morning of worship in the middle of a cool morning bike ride. I don’t think life gets much better than that. Except for maybe a hamburger or BBQ after church….
I was riding this morning and I hit a squirrel. I was in the middle of a line of cars going down Glade and I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention. It scared the crud out of me and didn’t do to well for the squirrel either (he is in squirrel heaven). I mean all of the sudden “bump”. It had been a great morning, I was feeling good and then..well you know….. I mean its not as if I was paying no attention, I just wasn’t paying enough.
Then I got to thinking, that’s how it is with our faith. We can be going along feeling pretty good about our relationship with God, going to church, praying some, reading our Bibles a little, and then “bump”. Satan throws temptation at us when we are not paying “enough” attention. I think that is when it is most tricky. I mean, when we are not paying attention to God at all we expect the temptations and we just kind of slide or even jump right into them. But….When we are paying attention, but not enough…..We get nailed, our heart beats 100 mph, because it seems to have come out of nowhere. But it was there….It was waiting for just the right time to dart across your path. It was just when you were not paying enough attention. Your life seems to be right with God and then….Well, you know….
The thing that Jesus’ closest followers noticed about Him the most was that His prayers seemed to be more powerful than theirs. I mean, these guys knew how to pray. They were religious Jews. But their prayers were obviously not as powerful as Jesus’. Jesus seemed to be very connected to God and the results were that Jesus was continually doing things that a human could not do without divine intervention. He had wisdom that could have only come from God. He had patience, love, joy, and compassion more than anyone they had ever seen.
It became obvious to them. Jesus received His power through the connection that came when He prayed. So one of the disciples, one night, probably after being pushed by the others or by losing by the draw of a straw, asked Jesus. Lord……”Teach us to pray like you…..Oh we pray….But it is like we are not paying close enough attention. “Jesus”, they said, “Your prayers are the kind of prayers that work. Please teach us, as we are your followers and we want to be like You.”
This Sunday I will be talking on the subject, in the Gospel of Luke, of “The Power Connection.” We are going to look at how Jesus taught His followers to pray. We will see that it is not like the natural way we learn to pray. We pray for ourselves and our prayers are very self-centered. Jesus taught that if we will pray God-Centered prayers, we will have the power connection. And it won’t just be when we are on our knees or at church. Jesus wants us to be connected with the Father all the time paying closer spiritual attention to everything we do so we are not side swiped by temptation.
If you do not have a church home and live in the DFW midcities area, join us as we gather on Sunday morning. If you are part of the LCC family I look forward to seeing you and worshiping with you.
Bring a friend….
And if you have a home church, go to church….Make sure you are paying attention. Enough attention that you don’t get surprised by temptation.
Serving you in Him
Your brotha from anotha motha
Royal
