Steve Parker, Bonita OPC

   Please pray for our brother, Stephen Parker, who has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.  He found out yesterday that a biopsy was mostly positive.  He will have other tests to see if there is any spreading, and anticipates having surgery sometime before Easter.

   Steve writes, “I intellectually and in my heart see and accept this as God's good providence in my life...it will, I hope, make me a better preacher.”

   Please pray that God will use this trial to sanctify both Steve and his family as well as the congregation.  Pray that the surgery will go well and that there will be no complications.

Bayview, Chula Vista

   Please pray for Bayview member, Dr Laura Hendrickson, author and biblical counselor at IBCD, who is leaving Monday for an intensive speaking trip (through March 3) in the Philippines.

   On the itinerary is a child sexual abuse training seminar at a Reformed Baptist orphanage in the Manila area, two conferences at churches, and a biblical counseling conference for Christian secular mental health professionals.

   Please pray for travel mercies, adequate rest, and good health during the trip, as well as grace to communicate (cross-culturally) the wonder of the Bible's clear and relevant answers to the personal issues that cause so many of life's hurts.

Sovereign Grace, Redlands

As mentioned a few weeks we continue to to have a number of visitors from a shuttered independent church. Six continue to attend regularly with five others attending occasionally. On Sunday afternoon, March 1, we are having a new members' class for those interested in learning more about SGOPC or who wish to join. We already have four committed to attend the class but none of these are amongst the new visitors. Please pray many of these new folks will come to the class and seek to became active, committed, growing members of Sovereign Grace.

An Encouragement to Pray

"The great danger facing all of us... is not that we shall make an absolute failure of life, nor that we shall fall into outright viciousness, nor that we shall be terribly unhappy, nor that we shall feel [that] life has no meaning at all -- not these things. The danger is that we may fail to perceive life's greatest meaning, fall short of its highest good, miss its deepest and most abiding happiness, be unable to tender the most needed service, be unconscious of life ablaze with the light of the Presence of God -- and be content to have it so -- that is the danger: that some day we may wake up and find that always we have been busy with husks and trappings of life and have really missed life itself. For life without God, to one who has known the richness and joy of life with Him, is unthinkable, impossible. That is what one prays one's friends may be spared -- satisfaction with a life that falls short of the best, that has in it no tingle or thrill that comes from a friendship with the Father." - Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), Sermons

Sovereign Grace, Redlands - Spring Evangelism Outreach

Sovereign Grace will begin its Spring Evangelism Emphasis in March. For three months church members and friends will be praying daily for our outreach efforts. Our focus this spring will be "One-to-One Outreach." Members and friends of Sovereign Grace will be asked to pray for and seek out individuals and families to invite to worships services, Bible studies, Men's Breakfasts, Fellowship Lunches, or other Sovereign Grace activities. Special emphasis will be for our folks to invite their contacts to our Easter worship services. Please pray that our entire congregation will get involved on some level in the Evangelism Emphasis. Please pray as well that the Lord will bless and empower this effort to share the Gospel and to reach out to our friends, family, and neighbors. We will keep you updated as to our progress. Thank you for your prayer support.

A Valentines Day Prayer

   On this Valentines Day,  let us pray for ourselves as officers and for the members of our regional churches, that according to the riches of his glory our heavenly Father may grant us to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in our inner being, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith—that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we all may be filled with all the fullness of God.  (Ephesians 3:16-19

Sovereign Grace, Redlands

Praise and Prayer List from First Stated Meeting

Praises:
1] Many new visitors (8) from an independent church that recently closed in the area
2] Involvement of the congregation remains strong
3] Some visitors getting involved in ministry
4] 2008 Budget year ended with a surplus
5] A new family (2 children) uniting with church

Prayer:
1] Spring Evangelism Emphasis: emphasis on “One-to-One” outreach
2] Lord will continue to give us many new visitors
3] New visitors become supportive members
4] Continued elder visitation routine of members
5] Christina: divorcee, supporting four children, brother and mom very ill out of town
6] John & Johanna Rajca: adopting two foster children
7] Better Jobs: John, Catherine, and Maria
8] Lord's financial provision for the ministry
9] Pastor’s growth in grace, leadership in marriage, and being example before leaders and church

Bayview, Chula Vista

Prayer List for the First Stated Meeting

Praises:

• For God’s blessing upon the family visits being made monthly by teams of elders and deacons

• For two new candidates for the office of deacon

• One of our members, Dr Laura Hendrickson, had a book about ministering to children on the autism specturm published by Moody Press last week; pray that God will use it to bless many families that face this challenge.

• For God’s continued financial provision for the church

• For God’s overwhelming blessing on Covenant Christian School in response to our plea in December for financial help to complete the school year; please continue to pray for or funding and increased student enrollment for next year

• Rejoice with JJ & Alicia (Novinger) Lyons in as they await the birth of the newest addition to their family, Emma (expected June 21).

Petitions: 

• A number of our members have been laid low in recent weeks by various illnesses; please pray for their recovery

• Pray for one of our men who faces painful separations from his children, and the expenses of transporting them back and forth to SF as a result of an unwanted (and unbibilical) divorce

• Pray for opportunities for some of our members who are currently seeking (or trying to change) jobs; pray that God would graciously protect the jobs and incomes of the members of all our churches.

• Pray that God will give us a growing vision and burden for our city, Chula Vista, and that we will develop consistent and effective outreach ministries to our neighbors.

• Ask God to make us more faithful and urgent in prayer.

• Pray for Pastor Roger and Sherry as they travel to Tennessee Thursday through Monday to visit with their son and his family.

Take the plunge; post a prayer list

Dear brothers,

   It was great to see you at the meeting yesterday.  It's nice to finish our business early, but (unhappily) that shortens our time for fellowship, which is all to brief and infrequent as it is.

   There were only a couple of printed prayer lists from churches on display at the meeting yesterday.  How about taking the plunge in using the prayer blog by posting a few praises and petitions for your church, so we can lift one another up before the throne of grace?  I'll start…

An encouragement to pray

   The men who have done mighty things for God have always been mighty in prayer, have well understood the possibilities of prayer, and made most of the possibilities. The Son of God, the first of all and the mightiest of all, has shown us the all-potent and far-reaching possibilities of prayer. Paul was might for God because he knew how to use, and how to get others to use, the mighty spiritual forces of prayer.

*  *  *

   God's house is the house of prayer; God's work is the work of prayer. It is the zeal for God's house and the zeal for God's work that makes God's house glorious and His work abide.

   When the prayer-chambers of saints are closed or are entered casually or coldly, then Church rulers are secular, fleshly, materialised; spiritual character sinks to a low level, and the ministry becomes restrained and enfeebled.

   When prayer falls, the world prevails. When prayer fails the Church loses its Divine characteristics, its Divine power; the Church is swallowed up by a proud ecclesiasticism, and the world scoffs at its obvious impotence.               — E.M. Bounds, The Purpose of Prayer

First Stated Meeting of Presbytery

The 1SM of 2009 is coming up on Friday and Saturday.  Let's:

   1.  Pray that God will bring us to the meeting with an eager sense of anticipation at what he will do in us and through us as we prayerfully deliberate and decide the matters that come before us.  May mutual respect and a desire to work together toward a common goal overcome any petty personal inhibitors that may arise in the course of the meeting.

   2.  Pray for the moderator and the clerks as they serve us through the meeting.

   3.  Thank God for the hospitality of the host church and families; may their efforts go smoothly.

   4.  Ask God to prepare our hearts of a rich time of fellowship in prayer as part of our meeting.

   5.  Ask God to strengthen and extend the witness of the congregations of the regional church as a result of our meeting.

   6.  Seek traveling mercies to and from the meeting for all who attend.

   

Sovereign Grace - Redlands

As mentioned last Monday (January 26) we have been having a number of visitors from a shuttered independent church. This past Sunday (February 1) we had seven of their group in our morning worship service. We give much thanks to God for this gracious blessing. Please keep praying as we continue our followup and that these folks will continue to attend and will become positive participants in our church family.