I have a prayer request, or rather, an anti-prayer request. Would you please stop praying about whether your church should serve its widowed and single parents?
“But we haven’t started praying about whether we should serve these people,” you say.
True. That’s probably because most churches completely ignore their widowed and single parents.
But now that you have come across this ministry – a ministry that focuses almost entirely on the needs of the widowed and single parents, now that you have seen the overwhelming number of scriptural passages on this topic, now that you have learned about God’s heart for these dear Christians, please, please, please don’t do this: don’t pray about whether or not you should serve them!
The reason we should never pray that prayer is because we should never pray to God about whether or not we should obey him. We are Christians. We must obey God. Obedience to God’s clear command is non-negotiable. We do not need clarification on what is already clear. We do not need to ask God what to do when he has already told us what to do. This clarity – this unequivocal demand on God’s part – that we serve people in our churches with pressing needs, is why Paul writes the following to Timothy:
“Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds,?and to be generous and willing to share.” (1 Timothy 6:18, emphasis mine)?
“Don’t suggest to them that they do good, Timothy. Don’t encourage them to do good. Command them. Get in their faces and tell them flat out to do this.”
And so, dear Christians, following in that grand biblical tradition, in obedience to God’s clearly expressed will, and with the authority of a servant of God Almighty, I command you to serve your widowed, single parents, and anyone else in your church who has long-term pressing needs. And while you’re at it, you might also do something about those same kinds of needs in your community.
Because we never pray about whether we should do God’s will.
We only pray about how to do it.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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