In Unity There is Strength -- Thank God for Our Presbytery

 

THE PRESBYTERY OF NORTH CENTRAL IOWA
“Serving Jesus Christ by equipping congregations for ministry and mission.”

January 2, 2012

Dear Pastors, Session Members and Members of the Congregations of Our Presbytery:

              Thank you for assisting us in our efforts to serve God in our Presbytery through the work of the Committee on Ministry (COM) this year.  It has been a privilege for our committee to serve with you in our service to Christ in this time and place.  This past year has been a time of considerable change and some struggle.  But there have also been many encouraging things and God’s light shines in the darkness.  When God’s light comes, darkness runs.

                With your help, and with the concerted effort of the members of the Committee on Ministry, I believe the COM has done a good job of meeting the challenges that have come before us.  Certainly, it has been our united intention to do our best to help the churches of our presbytery in their ministries, and to preserve the peace, purity and unity of our presbytery and the Presbyterian Church, USA.

                I have been blessed to serve with a gifted committee.  The Lord brought together a great group of elders and ministers to serve for such a time as this on the Committee on Ministry of the North Central Iowa Presbytery.  As we always hope with the committees of our denomination, each person brought strength to our whole.

                And what a blessing it is to have the support of our amazing staff – Pastor to the Presbytery David Feltman, Stated Clerk Blake Wood, Administrative Assistant Kaylene Hoskins and Secretary Vicki Thordsen, as spiritual and polity advisers, and special guides.  They are an awesome team.

                Now it is time for me to step down as COM Moderator, and leave the committee, along with a number of other faithful members.  We will miss serving with those who remain, but excellent people are coming on, as our committee renews itself.  Our polity provides for such needed transfusions of ideas and personalities.  And Dr. Marcia Rich, a remarkable leader, will be a tremendous new moderator.

                I have fully enjoyed my six years on COM.  From the view of COM moderator I have seen in new ways the abiding values of our Presbyterian connectedness, the scriptural strength of our polity, and the richness of the fellowship we enjoy in this presbytery. Every church in this presbytery has great things and good news to rejoice about.  I pray we will all stay together, bound together in love, as there is significant spiritual strength in our unity in Christ.

                May we all have open minds and open hearts to the Holy Spirit’s leading as pray and listen together, to God and to each other, as we move boldly into the tomorrow God has for us. 

IN CHRIST,

The Reverend Dr. S. Glenn Wilson

Moderator, Committee on Ministry

glennwilsonnusa@hotmail.com

 

May God Grant God's People a Vision of Unity and Peace -- Be Thou My Vision by 4HIM

Pray for the Unity of the Church -- We are Called to be a People of Prayer

Seven Key Ideas About Prayer
1. Prayer is Communication with God.  It Changes Things, and, Most Importantly, it Changes the One Who Prays.

“Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth, but from falling in love.” (Richard Foster)
“I live in the spirit of prayer. I pray as I walk about, when I lie down and when I rise up. And the answers are always coming.” (George Mueller)
“Unless I had the spiri of prayer, I could do nothing.” (Charles G. Finney)
“Beloved, it is not our long prayers but our believing God that gets the answer.” (John G. Lake)
“There is no need to get to a place of prayer; pray wherever you are.” (Oswald Chambers)

2. Prayer is not a one-way conversation.

“God must speak to us before we have any liberty to speak to him.” (John Stott)
“The true spirit of prayer is no other than God’s own Spirit dwelling in the hearts of the saints. And as this spirit comes from God, so doth it naturally tend to God in holy breathings and pantings. It naturally leads to God, to converse with him by prayer.”(Jonathan Edwards)

Jesus said in John 15:7, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”

3. Prayer is not a matter of talking an unwilling God into doing what you want Him to do.

“Prayer is not conquering God’s reluctance, but taking hold of God’s willingness.”
(Phillips Brooks)
“Prayer is not a means by which I seek to control God; it is a means of putting myself in a position where God can control me.” (Charles L. Allen)
“A sinning man will stop praying. A praying man will stop sinning.” (Leonard Ravenhill)
“I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
Remember, we don’t pray to change God. Prayer allows God to change me.

4. Prayer is not a substitute for actions that God has given us the ability to do.

“Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.” (A.W. Tozer)
“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” (Frederick Douglass)
“We Christians too often substitute prayer for playing the game. Prayer is good; but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is nothing but a blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism…To your knees, man! and to your Bible! Decide at once! Don’t hedge! Time flies! Cease your insults to God, quit consulting flesh and blood. Stop your lame, lying, and cowardly excuses. Enlist!” (C.T. Studd)

5. Prayer is not informing God about things He didn’t know.

“Prayer is not designed to inform God, but… to humble man’s heart, to excite his desire, to inflame his faith, to animate his hope, and to raise his soul from earth to heaven.” (Adam Clarke)

6. Prayer is not an exercise is hyper-techninical precision.
Some get excessively concerned about technicalities when they pray. Granted, we want to pray accurately, according to the truth of Scripture, and according to the leading of the Holy Spirit. But people can get so caught up in hyper-technicalities that they get off track when it comes to simply trusting God.
• Was I binding when I should have been loosing?
• Was I interceding when I should have been supplicating?
• Was I praying to the Father when I should have been talking to Jesus?
As Corrie Ten Boom said, “Nestle, don’t wrestle.” The simplicity of David’s faith is expressed beautifully in Psalm 131:1-2 (NLT): “I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”

7. Prayer must be the CENTRAL activity of the church.

“Prayer is not just getting ready for Christian service. Prayer is Christian service.”
(Adrian Rodgers)
“It is obvious that Paul did not regard prayer as supplemental, but as fundamental—not something to be added to his work but the very matrix out of which his work was born. He was a man of action because he was a man of prayer. It was probably his prayer even more than his preaching that produced the kind of leaders we meet in his letters.” (Oswald Sanders, from Dynamic Spiritual Leadership)
“I would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach.” (Charles Spurgeon)
“You could remove the powerful preaching from our church and it would still continue. You could remove the administration of pastoral care through the cell group system and the church would still continue. But if you remove the prayer life of our church it would collapse.” (David Yonggi Cho)