A call for prayer went out last Wednesday, September 13.
Elder David Ripley, President of the Manitoba-Saskatchewan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and its respective pastoral search committee have been actively seeking a senior pastor for Henderson Highway Church. Earlier this year, they welcomed our feedback to best determine our needs. Armed with this knowledge and the vision for our Conference, they have been prayerfully searching. They have found a potential candidate and have been working through their pastoral selection process. The next step is for the candidate to come to meet with our church board in person. However, there have been some barriers.
President Ripley asked our church to have a special prayer session on September 16 and to spread the word before the weekend for the entire church body to be unified. We opted to for hold a second prayer session this past Wednesday evening. While our church hosts a weekly prayer meeting, we had a specific emphasis on September 13.
The time was well-spent. We dove into scripture, gaining encouragement from the Bible. We serve a promise-keeping God! He does not fail! We were able to pray from a place of knowledgeable boldness, using God’s own words.
As we prayed, we kept our Bibles open to Jeremiah 23:4. ‘Then I will appoint responsible shepherds who will care for them, and they will never be afraid again. Not a single one will be lost or missing. I, the Lord, have spoken!’ (NLT) We used this passage as a reminder that God appoints shepherds to His flock. God appoints pastors for His church. The shepherd God sends Henderson Highway Church will be responsible and care for us according to God’s standard.
We asked the Lord to intervene on behalf of the pastoral candidate and to remove the barriers. We also asked for Him for clear guidance in the selection process. We don’t want to overstep His best and rush ahead of Him. Though God’s timing differs from ours, He is always on the move. There were some who also spent time praying from elsewhere last Wednesday, though they couldn’t physically be in the church at that moment.
Thankfully, God’s power is not dependent on our physical proximity.
There is power in united prayer. When we are not unified in our prayers, there is a spiritual tug-of-war that occurs. We hinder ourselves. As our prayers pull us in opposing directions, we cannot move forward or even together. We end up stuck.
Let’s keep praying together with a spirit of unity. There are still people in our local community who have not met Jesus. We need to work together to accomplish this task.
