Pathway Family Worship Guide
Pathway Family Worship Guide
- Time and place:
- Have a reading plan.
- Involve the family.
Fear Not! And Don’t Panic!
There is no reason that Christians should fear. Isaiah 41:10 So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My Righteous Right Hand.
- Respond with Faith – We trust in God
Thoughts on Prayer
Learning how to pray
“The LORD would speak.. (with Moses) ..face to face, as one speaks to a friend.”
Jesus: “My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me.”
Prayer has been the one practice that cannot be scientifically proven… other than that patients who pray to God & have people praying vocally over them generally do much better & heal faster.
“Prayer is more than a lighted candle,” insists the theologian George A. Buttrick. “It is the contagion of health. It is the pulse of Life.”
A real relationship with God means walking with Him daily, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It means talking with Him intimately,
Mark 1:35 “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, and left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed.”
The greatest person who ever lived on this planet was preeminently a Man of prayer. After being Baptized, after meeting most of those who would be his disciples, He sent them home. Before beginning His ministry, He would go into the wilderness and fast and pray for 40 days and nights. At the end of that time Satan came to test Him.
The priority of prayer is found in one way or another on almost every page of the Bible and in every chapter of church history. It is neither a peripheral theme nor an optional extra for the desperate and the devout.
How to “PRAY”: An acronym P=Pause R =Rejoice A=Ask Y=Yield
A 4 fold Circle of Prayer
Your Guide for 15 minutes of Prayer daily
- Choose a time and place
- Sacred meeting between you & God – no interruptions, music, phone,
- Know that He wants to meet you more than you want to meet with Him
- Talk out loud to God,(Whisper if you must)what’s currently on your mind
- If you run out of things to say then just listen.. come expecting to hear
Prayer does not belong to some other time in history, nor to some other type of person more spiritual or disciplined or experienced than you and me. Prayer is nothing at all unless it is a matter of vast and all-consuming importance for each one of us.
And it means listening attentively to his voice because, as Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow Me.”
Rest in Peace
Just like on Christmas Eve, we honor that night before the birth of Jesus.
So, on Hallows Eve, we remember the “saints” who have gone on from this world into God’s eternity. We don’t forget the loved ones who have gone on before us, rather we remember them, visit their graves and leave flowers.
Later in history, when the phrase became ubiquitous, it was often used to refer to the body itself, not the soul. The soul would sleep in the body, and it was wished that the body would find a peaceful rest. This is commonly known as “soul sleep” and is not a Biblical concept. For the Christian, to be “absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”, 2 Corinthians 5:8.
But outside the culture of the wests modernization, in South America, where Catholicism still reigned supreme, the world was still enchanted with spirts, good and evil. The faith merged with some of the cultic beliefs in Mexico and South America. So that throughout the Caribbean island’s & Mexico “All Hallows Eve” became the “Day of the Dead”, when spirits supposedly came back to life and people began to wear dreadful looking costumes to frighten the evil spirits back into their graves (or wherever they came from).
It became a holiday that people looked forward to because of the revelry of the event, (much like “Ash Wednesday” became a Carnival in South America. It is also widely believed that many Halloween traditions originated from ancient Celtic harvest festivals, from cults prior to Christianity.
Sadly, it has lost its innocence. With the rise of the occult beginning in the 1960’s Satan worship, witches, spiritism, talking with the dead, have all become a big part of our culture. More adults participate in “Halloween” than do children. The onslaught of horror movies has taken over, and the pornography industry is cashing in big time. Today in America, the age of disenchantment is over. And despite the efforts of so many atheists, the spirit world is very real to the clear majority of American’s.
It is not unusual to find Christians who today, believe in ghosts, that is departed spirits, come back from the dead to haunt. I’ve done enough funerals to know that most of America’s beliefs about the dead are sadly mistaken. Let me be very clear, “it is appointed for each man once to die, and then comes the judgment”, Hebrews 9:27. Your deceased relatives are not here for you to talk to. They are not up in the sky watching you make that touchdown, so you can look up point up and say, “this one’s for you”.
No one comes back from the dead, or sits in heaven watching you.
But there are evil spirits out there, fallen angels (known as demons) who followed Lucifer, as he became “Satan” and the “Devil” to be thrown out of heaven. They would like you to believe that they are your dead relatives or someone from the past ages, but they are not. One thing for sure, their powers are real. They can lead you into temptation. They can possess people and lead them to many destructive things (even like mass shootings or suicide bombings). The occult is nothing to be trifled with.
In eius dilectionePastor Mike
National Day of Prayer
Thomas Paine once said, “these are the times that try men’s souls”.
America is in crisis, inside and out. Protestors are threatening our peace from within, rioting if they don’t get what they want. College age adults, trained in our schools, want limits on free speech. They want to decide what is acceptable and what is not. The PC police have frightened most Americans from speaking their own minds. Outside of our borders we face new threats of terrorism on our shores. Millions of people unhappy with their lot in life have been illegally streaming into our country in order to attain free benefits from our government: education, medical care, welfare, housing without having to work for it. Our own politicians are enabling them in order to gain votes in any election. O yes, they are not citizens, but they can get drivers licenses and they will vote.
Within our country we have seen the corruption of government in every sector, leaders who set up rules for the citizens which they themselves refuse to be a part of. Just look at the degradation in our country due to a loss of proper values and morals. Have your read about North Carolina’s new bathroom laws to protect our families and children, while our own Federal Justice Department is trying to overturn such laws as civil rights violations. What about the rights of descent American’s who don’t want a few people’s perversions flaunted in their face while they try and use public bathroom? Don’t they have rights as well? We have a secular elite who want to remove our foundational freedoms in order to bolster their own power in government. They are systematically tearing down and undermining the great foundations of our country. What ever happened to the “will of the people”?
If there’s ever been a time in our countries history in which we ought to drop to our knees and begin to pray earnestly for our nation, this is it.
We have gone so far off course that it seems impossible to get back to what America used to be, what America needs to be for our sake as well as for the sake of the world. Abraham Lincoln once said, “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.” We have always had the sense that we could do anything and fix anything, but as I look today we have gone too far. It is going to take a miracle of Biblical proportions to save America for future generations.
In the book “7 Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness,” by Eric Metaxas,
He recounts a story of George Washington’s commitment to prayer during the Revolution. His nephew, George Lewis, told a Washington biographer that “he had accidentally witnessed [the general’s] private devotions in his library both morning and evening: that on these occasions he had seen him in a kneeling position with a Bible open before him and that he believed such to have been his daily practice.”
Would that every Christian in America had that kind of commitment to prayer. It was a miracle that we won the revolutionary war, it was a miracle that gave us success at Midway that opened the door for victory in WW2. Throughout our history the God fearing praying Christians of America have touched the heart of God and kept our country afloat. We must get back to this kind of passionate prayer.
At Chuck Colson’s center they have given us specific focus on how Christ’s church—the people of God—can make a difference in our culture and around the world. We should not hesitate to join them and millions of others throughout our country.
And here’s what we will pray:
- We will praise the Lord that His sovereign goodness is as true today as ever. We will remember that this world ultimately belongs to God,
who created all things and Who, in Christ, is restoring all things.
- We will repent of our sin, and thank God for His promised forgiveness.
We will remind ourselves that all have sinned, and that we are welcomed
by God through repentance. Nehemiah began his work in the world with repentance. So will we.
- We will pray for our current government leaders to fight evil and stand up for truth. We will remember that there is no place where God is not at work.
- We will pray that truth and justice will prevail over “political correctness” and “tolerance,” both in our own lives and in our culture. We will remember that right and wrong do not change according to cultural fashions, nor does legality alter morality.
- We will pray for the upcoming election season, that God would show us mercy and not give us what we deserve. We will remember that God ultimately orchestrates human history and uses whom He will to accomplish His purposes.
- We will pray that God unites His people, using them to bring restoration in this broken culture. We’ll remember that those who have been reconciled to God have been put on mission as agents of reconciliation.
Friends, as we pray, we must remember what is true about God, about the Church, and about the world. History demonstrates that God will not tolerate legally approved immorality & a country that spurns His Word & His Ways. But history also shows us that God will hear our prayers.
Coffee anyone?
The host offered his guests coffee. He went to the kitchen where he had already prepared the coffee. He picked out a number of different cups and mugs, as he had a good collection. Some were porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain-looking, some expensive, and some exquisite. He brought it into the room with sugar and cream telling them to help themselves to the coffee.
After everyone had chosen a cup, and began to drink their coffee, the host remarked to the group. “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for us to want only the best for ourselves, that is the source of our problems and stress.
“Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases, it’s just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup. But, subconsciously, we go for the best cups…and then we began eyeing each other’s cups.
“Now consider this: Life is the coffee, and the jobs, money and, the politics, our position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, and the type of cup we have does not define nor change the quality of life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us.
God brews the coffee, not the cups. Let’s enjoy our coffee.”
When a family suffers a devastating fire in their home a number of things transpire. There is the immediate shock followed by the sense of loss when you start to realize all that was destroyed. The task of sorting through the rubble, is often a very painful task. People often have to move out of the house right away due to health issues or safety problems. That change in itself can be very demoralizing.
At some point you begin to focus on what is really important in life.
It always comes down to loved ones and relationships. You realize that your life was not the house of the things in it. Job, in the Old Testament, experienced this in a major way that. God forbid we will ever have to experience such a nightmare.
The house the clothes, the possessions, were just the cups that hold our lives. God is most concerned about His beloved children.
The cups they come and go. Sometimes in life the cups are beautiful and precious. At other times they are downright disappointments.
But through it all, it is the “coffee” that is important, what God is brewing in our lives.
