Three Thoughts After the Sermon

Three Thoughts After the Sermon 
By Vermon Pierre, Lead Pastor

Three things to highlight/remind you of from last Sunday’s sermon, “A God for Your Soul” (Ps 42-43):

1. This is a bit allegorical, but as I think of God calling us out of the dark corners of our soul and to his “holy hill” in worship (43:3), I can’t help but think of how Jesus died on a cross set up on the hill of Golgotha, a place known as “The Place of the Skull” according to Matthew 27:33. Because of what Jesus accomplished through his death and resurrection, this formerly cursed, morbid hill is now for the believer a place of worship, hope, and joy.

2. I made a point of emphasizing the special importance of the Sunday morning worship of the gathered church. I did so because I believe that, in our efforts to rightly point people to not think of church just as being a Sunday thing and to see every day as worship, we have ended up neglecting the unique significance of Sunday morning worship for our ongoing spiritual health and growth. Every Sunday is an opportunity for the believer to receive deep counseling and real comfort direct from the Lord. Fear and despair tend to shrivel up as light and truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ is mediated to your soul in worship.

3. That quote from Piper is so good that I’m going to post it again here:

“The basic movement of worship on Sunday morning is not to come with our hands full to give to God, as though he needed anything (Acts 17:25), but to come with our hands empty, to receive from God. And what we receive in worship is the fullness of God, not the feelings of entertainment. We ought to come hungry for God. We should come saying, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Ps. 42:1–2). God is mightily honored when a people know that they will die of hunger and thirst unless they have God.

Nothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing—not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends—nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God. This conviction breeds a people who go hard after God on Sunday morning [and I would add here – “and also then go hard after God the rest of the week”].

They are not confused about why they are in a worship service. They do not view songs and prayers and sermons as mere traditions or mere duties. They see them as means of getting to God or God getting to them for more of his fullness—no matter how painful that may be for sinners in the short run.” (John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards)

Highlights from Legacy Conference 2010

Highlights from Legacy Conference 2010
Alden Powers, Music Director @Roosevelt Community Church

Last week Jordan (aka Barabbas the Rebel of the Christian hip hop group i65), my wife Melissa and I attended the Legacy Conference in Chicago, Illinois. This was a three-day conference dedicated to equipping people for urban ministry. The conference featured prominent guest speakers like Paul Washer, Francis Chan and Thabiti Anyabwile. It also featured concerts and workshops taught by many of today’s top Christian hip hop artists such as Le Crae and Shai Linne. Here are a few of the highlights from this very informative conference.

Discipling Artists in the Local Church

Lamp Mode recording artist Steven the Levite taught an extensive four-hour workshop on how to minister to rappers, musicians and artists in the local church. Steven discussed some of the reasons why rappers have a difficult time getting plugged into a local church. He stressed the importance of artists getting involved in other ministries in the church that are not as high profile as performing. He also addressed qualifications for rappers to have in order to properly minister.

Compassion Ministry

This workshop focused on what is necessary to have an effective ministry toward the poor and needy. Concepts stressed in this workshop were the importance of the person going into ministry to be prepared spiritually. They must be faithful to the Word of God and spiritually mature. We also discussed what the Bible says about poverty and Godly compassion. We also went over how to effectively evangelize, as well as practical issues to consider when ministering to someone in poverty.

Lamp Mode Concert

Thursday night’s concert featured the music of three artists from the Lamp Mode record label. Steven the Levite mixed spoken word with his unique rapping style. Steven likes to experiment with more complex rhythmical patterns that are rarely heard elsewhere in hip hop. Hazakim, an energetic duo consisting of two Messianic Jewish brothers, followed Steven the Levite. Shai Linne challenged everybody’s assumption of what a hip hop concert is by singing classic hymns along with a beat boxer from the audience!

Cross Movement Concert

Friday night was one of craziest concerts I’ve ever witnessed. Cross Movement artists LeCrae, Thi’sl, Flame and Tedashii rocked the house. All four artists were on the stage at the same time and the energy was explosive. The crowd was jumping, LeCrae poured water on the audience, Thi’sl grabbed a guitar, and the God’s people jumped for joy.

Francis Chan

Friday night Francis spoke very candidly and openly about the need for us to love Jesus more than anything. He challenged us to look into our hearts and see what indwelling sin we are harboring that keeps us from a true, deep relationship with our Lord. Chan told stirring stories about saints all over the world living Godly lives. Hearing about these people such as his grandmother who talks to Jesus all day long, or missionaries in Afghanistan who were nearly killed for their faith convicted Chan to leave his comfortable surroundings in an affluent church and seek a deeper relationship with Christ.

Saturday Inner-City Outreach

The best part about this conference was that after we were fed with some amazing Biblical teaching, we were then sent out and expected to apply our knowledge. The conference adjourned from the comfy confines of the Moody Bible Institute to a low-income neighborhood in Chicago’s west side. The outreach featured Christian rap concerts and food all day long, but while the stage was set up, we were asked to go out into the community and tell people not only about the concert, but also about the good news of the Gospel.

As we walked down some of the poorest streets of Chicago, God worked to open up the hearts of many of the people in the community to hear the Gospel message. We talked to guys getting drunk on their front porch. We talked to grandparents who had lived long enough to see the neighborhood deteriorate. But as we shared the message of hope in the savior Jesus Christ, people were willing to listen and ponder some truths that they had heard for the very first time.

Overall I felt the Legacy Conference greatly helped me grow in understanding how to share the love of Christ in an urban context. I got some great knowledge, met some great people and heard some great music!

5 Reflections on Leading a Prayer Vigil

5 Reflections on Leading a Prayer Vigil
Alden Powers, Music Director @Roosevelt Community Church

Last month my wife and I hosted a two-week-long morning prayer vigil on behalf of our missionary team in Kenya. Having served on the team two years before, we felt a calling to be diligently in prayer for our current team as they shared the gospel half a world away. Committing this much time to prayer for one specific thing really opened my eyes to the nature and power of prayer. I have prayed for missionary teams, I have participated in days of fasting and prayer, but never anything of this length and I wish I would have done more of these sooner in my life. Here are a few of my insights:

1. God listens to your prayers

God tells us in places like 1 Kings 9:3 and 2 Kings 20:5 that he does hear our prayers and act on them. When we got together and prayed we had no idea what was happening in Kenya. We didn’t know how the community was doing. We didn’t even know if the team had arrived safely. But we stepped out in faith and came to the Lord with our prayers anyway. Upon hearing reports when they returned, we were amazed by the level of transformation that had taken place. We know that the church is growing rapidly. People in the church are growing in their spiritual maturity. Children are learning in school. There is more water. All of things we prayed for, God seemed to be doing in our sister community! Praise God!

2. God wants persistent prayers

In Luke 11:5-13, Jesus tells a parable of a friend asking another friend for loaves of bread to feed some guests arriving late at night. The friend, despite being already in bed, gives into his friend’s request due to his persistent asking. This parable illustrates the importance of asking God for things again and again. If we ask, we will receive and if we seek, we shall find. But we need to be bold and persistent in our efforts.

3. There are different ways to pray

When we pray, there are many different things we can do. It’s not just all about asking. Our prayers can be prayers of thanksgiving. They can be prayers of praise. We should also confess our sins to God. These categories of prayer can be summarized in the acronym A.C.T.S (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication).

We can ask God for things, but ultimately God will grant to us only what is truly good and right. The purpose of our prayers is to not align God’s will with ours, but to align our will with God’s. God may grant us what we ask for, but even more so we need to ask our Heavenly Father “thy will be done”.

A great way to keep in tune with this idea is to pray through scripture. Speak scripture passages to God so that your prayers can be more fully in line with His will.

Consistent and persistent prayer on a certain thing can greatly increase the level of sincerity of your prayers. When we pray for something once, we can easy to get pulled into the “checklist” mentality. I prayed for it, cross it off my list, now I can continue with what I was doing and feel good about myself that I prayed. But when we consistently come to the Lord again and again with the same requests, it can transform our simple prayers into heartfelt longing. It deepens our sincerity. It enables us to dwell upon what we are asking of our Father and really pour out our soul for what we are praying for. This deepens not only the effectiveness of our prayers, but it also deepens our relationship with God. We are no longer “mailing in” our requests. We are no longer folding our hands and talking out of obligation. We are now crying out to the Lord. We are talking to God! And we begin to understand prayer as an intimate conversation between a child and their Father.

4. It is important to have a consistent time of the day to pray

We held our prayer vigil every morning from 7am to 8am. We chose to pray in the morning because it worked best for our schedule. There’s no real significance to praying in the morning (my wife might have preferred at later time!). Some people might prefer afternoon or evening. But the important thing is to resolve to set aside a certain time every day to pray. Jesus seemed to pray morning and evening (Mark 1:35, Matthew 26:36), and he definitely resolved to pray often.

In our busy, on-the-go culture it’s easy to blow off prayer time in favor of “more important” matters. I know for me that if I don’t schedule it, it won’t happen. Take time to block off a certain amount of time during your day for prayer. It doesn’t have to be for a whole hour, but anything is better than nothing.

5. Quality is more important than quantity

Some days we had as many as ten people at our house praying. Some days it was only my wife and I. Regardless of how many people we had, the important thing was sincere prayer. God tells us that when two or more are gathered in His name, He is there also (Matthew 18:20). We didn’t have to have standing room only in our house in order for God to act on our prayers.

Three Thoughts After the Sermon

Three Thoughts After the Sermon
By Vermon Pierre, Lead Pastor

Here are three things that I'd like to further highlight from last Sunday's sermon, "Pure Words vs Impure Words" (Ps 12):

1. I've been thinking a lot these days about what kind of people we are becoming in today's information loaded, interconnected, always "on" world. Such an environment seems to more easily encourage and even embrace insincerity and hypocrisy. We don't just have a "double heart" (v.2), we have many hearts, one for each of the many lives we are living. Are we aware of these dangers? And what are we doing to address them?

2. Psalm 119 is just a great great psalm. Every time I find myself feeling a bit dry when it comes to reading and meditating on Scripture, Psalm 119 wakes me back. It reminds me of the great treasure the Lord has given us by giving us his word, and it inspires me to dive deep into it, knowing that it will lead me in paths of purity, delight and worship.

3. It's both an encouragement and warning to know that in the end all lies, deception, and hypocrisy will fade away and that it is the Lord and his word alone that will remain forever. If you spend your life saying and doing things that are essentially lies and deception, you will end up with nothing. Only a life lived along the contours of God's word will have something to show for itself when eternity comes.