Prayer Requests

ICANRAY: Please pray for Client Eva Doyle recently evicted, She says she needs rent and a deposit for new place, please pray for Pastor Dan as he prepares to be interviews on a local program on WLMB-will air in late February, Pray for $31,000 budget shortfall by September, pray for people who have recently accept Christ to follow through on their decision, Pray for AS-back pain, JK addiction recovery, Several others who have text about health concerns, mental health concerns, and life circumstance. God knows every person's genuine need and we can trust Him, Pray His will be done. Thank you. Any person can be added to receive these prayer prompts by telling them to text ICANPRAY to 419-419-0095. Don't forget to pray for your neighbors by name or however you can. We win in Jesus. If you want to be removed respond STOP ICANPRAY. Responding SETTINGS will allow you to update your profile and choose from other free services. God Bless, P. Dan

Keys and locks of Prayer

At new Heights we have been going through the 10 keys and 10 locks of prayer from the Kendricks book that was generated surrounding the movie war room. Even though I've been through these 20 pieces previously I have really enjoyed going through them with the church. The input of passionate people in the room as we puzzle out these topics and how God uses them to glorify Himself and to support us, has been amazing. 

I reflect now on how there is almost nothing as encouraging to a pastor as when a growing believer in their congregation asks significant questions about how they can apply the lesson being taught to their own lives. 

I'm not a huge fan of bread and butter anymore. Of course I really enjoy it when the bread is homemade or substantive. However, when the bread is that sugar-packed, block-store variety, even if I enjoy the taste, all I can think about is how they take everything good out of it to pasteurize it and then add vitamins back in that are less digestible and the whole mess is packed with a bunch of useless calories delivered via sugar. For a moment, I begin to think I am living in the matrix and the bread is not real. 

The bread is a lie. (I'm not sure how many will get this reference.)

So, I'm not that big on bread and butter anymore. 

Bread and butter used to be a staple. 

So, to say this is my bread and butter used to mean, the thing is a pillar to me. The thing is essential and it makes me generally better. In my life at least, bread and butter has lost this position. But now that I've spent a couple of paragraphs on explaining what bread and butter could be, I'm pretty sure you will understand the following statement. 

Congregation members genuinely and aggressively interacting with the lesson is a pastor's bread and butter. It doesn't pay my bills but it pumps me up in a way that nothing else can. 

On days when I could give up. And I suppose that's many days...

On days when I could give up, thoughts of congregation members or even visitors being radically transformed by God's grace as they interact with lesson that God is using me to teach, sustain me. 

Do I need it? Has God not called me to continue regardless of how people respond? Why, yes indeed. He has called me to continue regardless of my own feelings. 

But He is a good god. I sense his love in the encouragement that comes from a congregation member or a visitor delving deep into the truths of God. I am reminded that God is a life changer. He is a gentle and yet mighty, a holy and just, and yet gracious, giver of good gifts 

So, what I am saying is that it occurs to me that one of the great gifts that God gives to pastors, the gift that fills up sails....is the gift of a congregation member exhibiting a desire to grow that goes beyond just showing up. 

Don't get me started talking about showing up. My feelings on that topic may be heard loud and clear in a lesson I taught entitled, Don't Stay Home.. You can listen to it on rss.com or on Alexa or Siri but neither of them are very good at finding a specific episode from our audio program which is about 250 episodes long. The easiest way to find it would probably be in a life4Toledo app or maybe by searching it on Google. 

To share a synopsis here would make this blog even longer. Or, would it?

Thank you Jesus. 

P. Daniel Stevenson
Pastor New Heights Fellowship
Director Southside Life Station
419.469.0270
churchToledo.com
app: life4toledo
text INFO to 419.419.0095 for updates
text NHFBCT to 49775 to get free right now media

Geourge Muller Quote

Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, and an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer after having dressed in the morning. Now, I saw that the most important thing was to give myself to the reading of God’s word, and to meditation on it, that through it, my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the word of God, whilst meditating on it, my heart might be brought to experimental communion with the Lord. I began therefore to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning, early in the morning , The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words of the Lord’s blessing upon His precious word, was to begin to meditate on the word of God, searching as it, were into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon, but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less to prayer. When thus I have been for a while making confession or intercession or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next word or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others as the word may lead to it, but still continually keeping before me, that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation. The result of this is that there is always a good deal of confession, thanksgiving, supplication, or intercession mingled with my meditation, and that my inner man almost invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened , and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart. The difference, then, between my former practice and my present one is this: Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the time. At all events, I almost invariably began with prayer…But what was the result? I often spend a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, or even an hour on my knees before conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul etc.; and often after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or quarter of an hour or even half an hour, I only then really began to pray. I scarcely ever suffer now in this way. For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental fellowship with God, I speak to my father and to my friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it,) about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word. It often now astonished me that I did not sooner see this point, it is as plain to me as anything that the first thing that the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man. Now what is food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God; and here again, not the simple reading of the word of God so that it only passes through our minds as water passes through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it and applying it to our hearts. When we pray we speak to God. Now prayer, in order to be continued for any length of time in any other than a formal manner, requires generally speaking, a measure of strength or Godly desire and the season therefore when this exercise of the soul can be most effectually performed is after the inner man has been nourished by meditation on the word of God, where we found our Father speaking to us, to encourage us, to comfort us, to instruct us, to humble us, to reprove us. We may therefore, profitably meditate with God’s blessing though we are ever so weak spiritually; nay, the weaker we are the more we need meditation for the strengthening of our inner man. Thus there is far less to be feared from the wandering of the mind than if we give ourselves to prayer without having had time previously for meditation. \ I dwell so particularly on this point because of the immense spiritual profit and refreshment I am conscious of having derived from it myself, and I affectionately and solemnly beseech all my fellow believers to ponder this matter. By the blessing of God, I ascribe to this mode the help and strength which I have had from God to pass in peace through deeper trials, in various ways, than I have ever had before; and having now above fourteen years tried this way, I can most fully, in fear of God commend it. Spiritual Secrets of George Muller by Roger Steer, Harold Shaw publishers Wheaton Il. 60-62.