Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

At our members meeting last May, we agreed to use a church health process offered by the General Conference. The process is called PULSE and the goal is to help participating churches become healthier—being what God has called us to be and doing what God has called us to do.

The Deacons and Elders will be meeting with John Pethtel by Zoom next Monday night, September 30, to truly step into the PULSE process. We covet your prayers for wisdom, for discernment, for strength, and for all the skills needed to make sure that wherever this goes, we go together as whole church.

As we engage with the PULSE process, we don’t know exactly what we’ll be asked to consider, nor do we know what God will lay on our hearts.

But this we claim: God is in control!

We plan — and God causes. Because God causes , we bring our every thought, plan, anxiety, and hope before Him. Over the last year and a half, we have been more intentional about praying about our life together with Him. This is another season for intentional, unified prayer.

Most of us find it easy to pray at times. And most of us find that we run out of words and thoughts at other times. In those times when words fail, I’m grateful for God’s promise that His Spirit will effectively intercede for us (Romans 8:26-27).

And, I’m grateful that He has provided examples to help us know how to pray. We can find examples in the Psalms, in the historical books of the Old Testament, in the prophets, and in the gospels.

Paul’s letters provide a surprising number of prayers specifically for churches. Over the next few weeks, I’ll highlight some of those prayers in these emails. They ask God to help us be the people He has called us to be.

Here is one of those prayers:

And this I pray, that your love may overflow still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may discover the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and blameless for the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, for the glory and praise of God.

Philippians 1:9—11 (NASB)

In it, we see that we can ask God to:

• increase our love (for Him and others)
• increase our knowledge (of who He is)
• increase our discernment (of what is excellent)
• increase our sincerity (that we may not be fake)
• increase our blamelessness (that we may to the right thing)
• increase our yielding to His Spirit
• increase our praise of Him

May our Heavenly Father cause us grow as His church for His glory.

Grace to you and Peace
in Christ,

Andrew