KEY TEXT: Zechariah 4:6
What’s Next? Three Steps for a Spiritual Restart
Would you like to experience spiritual renewal together with your church family? Here’s one suggested plan that has led to spiritual awakening and hope for churches, when people continually surrender themselves to Jesus and ask for the blessing of the Holy Spirit. Pray about how your church or family or prayer group can experience a spiritual “restart” this year. Make a plan, seek input from others, and set a date to begin. You’ll want to adapt your ideas depending on your culture, your community, and the needs of your group.
1. Restart
Take several weeks or months to pray intently for the Holy Spirit, along with studying Scripture and possibly a short devotional book.
2. Relationship Care
Begin intercessory prayer for five unreached people, then contact them and maintain a friendship in a way that is sincere and tactful. During this time you may want to study another book about prayer or revival.
Consider studying in pairs for support and deeper understanding.
Think about it: if 10 church members each pray for and maintain contact with five people, that would be 50 people, and it would grow from there. At the end of the 40 days, you might invite the people you prayed for to a special visitor Sabbath. Next, invite each person to join a small group (Bible study, healthy cooking, exercise, social activities, whatever is appropriate for the person’s interests). You can also invite them to upcoming evangelistic meetings. Remember to attend the meetings with your friends and help them feel welcome.
3. Sharing
Each member can invite the people they’ve been praying for to attend evangelistic meetings, small-group Bible studies, or a one-on-one Bible study. (If some of your prayer contacts aren’t ready for Bible studies,
invite them to a small group focused on an area of interest, such as exercise, healthy cooking, hobbies, or social activities.)
What Can Your Church Do?
Pray together and make a plan for your church today. “All heaven is in activity, and the angels of God are waiting to cooperate with all who will devise plans whereby souls for whom Christ died may hear the glad tidings of salvation. Angels who minister to those that shall be heirs of salvation, are saying to every true saint: ‘There is work for you to do.’ ‘Go, stand and speak . . . to the people all the words of this life’ (Acts 5:20)” (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6, pp. 433, 434).
God sends you out to the world with this promise: “What you are planning will neither succeed by the might of an army nor by human strength; rather, my Spirit will accomplish it! I, the Lord God Almighty, promise this”
(Zechariah 4:6, translated from the German Hoffnung fuer Alle version)