Urgent Prayer Request

Nik Franks is my pastoral intern. last night Lindsay, his wife had an emergency c-section and delivered Pierce at 24 weeks, 1 lb. 8 ounces. Lindsay is doing well but Pierce is obviously is acutely premature and breathing on with a special ventilator. Please pray.

Yesterday I also canvassed 400 homes around Lake Wylie Elementary for our largest outreach so far for Advent Church. We are having a Resurrection Easter Egg hunt. I met a number of kids as they got off their buses and gave them an invite card. At the same time the 5th grade parents are having a huge garage sale in the school parking lot - Pray for many divine appointments. Jessica Coulter, our children's director, will be sharing the resurrection story before the hunt.

Additionally, due to outside support waning, I have started "tent-making", by working at a local Lowe's store 6 AM to 2 PM. This is my third week. Pray for endurance and for the many that have approached me at work to talk about spiritual things. Even the Human Resources lady has given my name to others going through crisis.

I believe God has great pans for Advent Church, but like Pierce we need your prayers. Please pray now!


Check out the blog that Nik and Lindsay are keeping current about Pierce. Link on this page.

Prayer for 2010

I read the following on the blog of a fellow PCA pastor, it ministered to my soul and I hope you find in helpful too!

Scotty Smith, Pastor for Preaching, Teaching and Worship at Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee, wrote this gospel-soaked prayer that he wrote early on January 1st after reflecting on Joshua 24:14-15:

Most gracious Father, I’m sitting here sipping fresh coffee watching flames dance in the fireplace, early into the first day of the New Year, and I’m a most humbled and grateful man.

How I praise you that I’ve begun this New Year with a little better understanding of the gospel than I had last year… and the previous years. I’m already praying that I can say the same thing this time next year. For in the gospel you’ve given me everything I need for living… and for dying.

I respond to Joshua’s bold charge to the Israelites, not with a list of New Year’s resolutions about me and what I’m gonna do this year for you. Rather, I begin this year resolving to abandon myself more fully to everything Jesus has already accomplished for me… to the specific things he intends to do in me… and to the ways he purposes to live his life and mission through me. He is the promise keeper, not me.

Dear Father, that’s why serving you is much more than merely “desirable.” It’s the greatest privilege possible… the most honored calling conceivable… the purest delight imaginable! For Jesus is my Joshua—the one by which you have already saved me… and are presently saving me… and, one Day, will completely save me. With no sense of embarrassment or cliché, I gladly say, JESUS SAVES!

Knowing you by grace and being known by you in Jesus, makes throwing away my idols less like a painful sacrifice, and more like a liberating dance. For all my “empty nothings” have ever given me is momentary pleasure, along with lasting disaster. Remind me of this all year long when I lose “gospel-sanity,” and am tempted to think otherwise…

So my humble prayer and earnest longing for this New Year is this… for me, my family, and the household of faith of which you have made me a part… that we will consider our lives worth nothing to us, if only we may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given us—the task of testifying (by word and deed) to the gospel of your grace. (Acts 20:24).

So very Amen, I pray, in Jesus name, with great anticipation and much thanksgiving.