Evangelism Every Day

Step #1

What’s your first step?

When it comes to something new in your life what’s the #1 thing you do?

Do you talk about it with your friends?

Do you make a list of pros and cons?

Do you worry about what is going to happen because you don’t like change?

If we are going to follow our examples in Scripture, then step #1 is pray!

Jesus showed us. Before he chose the twelve disciples, he spent all night in prayer (Luke 6:12). Before he asked them “But who do you say that I am?” he was praying alone (Luke 9:18). Then one of those disciples betrayed him. He was abandoned by the rest. Still, he suffered and died for all of us who would become his disciples. On the night before he died, Jesus spent what may be his most famous time of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane at the Mount of Olives (Luke 24:39-46). He prayed the ultimate example:

“Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the church got started in the book of Acts. What can I learn as, Lord willing, we plant this new Compass Bible Church here in Huntington Beach?

We’ve been reading through the book of Acts as a family and trying to summarize each chapter with the kids. In chapter 1, Jesus goes up. In chapter 2, Holy Spirit comes down. But in between, we see the small number of disciples taking the first step there in the upper room:

Acts 1:14 – All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

Later it says the church was devoting themselves to the teaching and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayer (Acts 2:42), but here we see out of all of these there is only one Step #1: prayer.

It has been such a blessing for me to be a part of the team God has put together to plant Compass HB!   These people pray! We’ve been really encouraged in prayer together by reading The Power of Prayer by R.A. Torrey.  I have gotten to jump into some of the prayer meetings happening all over the OC. Literally, one morning I jumped into a car in a parking lot with a couple of brothers because nothing was open yet. The sun wasn’t even up for business. And there in that car we poured out our hearts to God asking him to plant this new church in Jesus’ name. By the time we opened our eyes, light was shining all around us. A new day had just begun, but it already felt like the rest of that day was going to be bonus time because step #1 was done.

On my first day full-time here in Huntington Beach, we had a meeting with the city. It turns out they wanted us to go through an approval process that would probably not be done by the first service we had planned. God made it immediately clear my first thing to do here is pray.

Today we had another meeting with the city. Having spent time in prayer I was ready for a “Yes” our first service is a go or “No” we need to move on with Plan B. The answer came back more like “Wait and See.” Or as the Lord is teaching me “Pray and See.”

So please join us during this season of prayer for Compass HB and let us see how God is going to answer us. A specific request is the approval process with the city. We would love to start services as we had planned at Marina High School on September 7^th and we are praying for it. But we are ready to submit ourselves to God’s will, whatever it may be. Most importantly, pray Jesus will build his church through us and we will see many souls saved!

Whatever your next step is in life, there is a step that comes before that.

Step #1 is to pray.

And when you think you are ready to move on to the next step, go back and repeat step #1.