Good morning Church Requel!
I don't know about you, but it seems like I've been praying for so many more things lately within our church family. So the topic of our next sermon from 1 John is most timely for us. What does it mean to pray with confidence? How do we actually do it? What is the goal of our prayer life?
Many times people will tell me that they don't feel comfortable praying. Or don't want to pray out loud. Or not in public. And I understand that. After all, Jesus told us that the prayer of a righteous man is often behind the prayer closet door.
Having said that, as your pastor, I'm concerned that the reason many of us are not confident about praying with one another is because we're also not confident about praying by ourselves. Or we do very little of it. Or we pray, but we struggle with the faith behind our prayers.
I hope to help you with that this Sunday morning. Pastor John in his first letter is writing intimately to his beloved congregation. When he comes to his last chapter (verses 14 & 15), he says some pretty bold things about praying with boldness. I'm convinced this is because he saw it first hand from the Master Prayer, Jesus. I'm also convinced that he experienced the results of such bold prayer himself as a pastor and Christ follower.
We'll learn Sunday morning that praying with confidence is not something just for the pastor or for the Super Saint. Effective praying with boldness is designed by God Himself to be something each one of us can and should be able to do... with confidence! I hope you will make Sunday morning at Church Requel a priority. For those of you who would like a head start, here are the online sermon notes.
KidsMin News. I've written to you often about the new Middle School class being led by Cindy Thoman. I'm so excited for this new class. In fact I will be enjoying a pizza dinner with these upcoming teenagers on Sunday evening at our home.
Today, though, I want to tell you about some great things going on with our younger students. They are taught by Tamira Barnes and her crew of faithful assistants. Recently they have been learning about the miraculous power of Jesus! The last couple weeks they've learned about Jesus walking on water, calming the storm on the sea and telling the disciples to cast their fishing nets on the other side of the boat .. Resulting in a huge bunch of fish! They've learned Jesus can do anything!

Of course Tamira is never satisfied with just telling her students about this. She helps them experience it for themselves. The pictures above show our children creatively learning with fishing poles made out of pretzels, twiZerls, and gummy fish. (I don't even know what a twiZerl is. It's a good thing we have Tamira!)
For those of you, who are serving in our KidsMin department, I just want to shout out "THANK YOU!" What a difference you are making in the eternity of our young people! For those of you who are thinking about joining the KidsMin team, please talk to Tamira. We have increased the size of our KidsMin department by 50% in the last month and the kiddos are responding really well. We could use your help if God is calling you into this area. What a great opportunity we have!
Worship This Sunday is being led by Ron, Jan and Brandi. I had the privilege of running the sound and tech booth for their rehearsal last evening. You're in for a treat. I love to hear them sing. I also love to hear Jan pray! (How good is it that we will be learning about confident prayer and can hear from Jan, who I know will pray with confidence!)
At the end of our worship service, Jeff Barnes will join me on the platform. We will invite all who desire special prayer in their lives to come forward. We will pray for each one and we will stay as long as necessary. We invite you also to pray for those who come forward. We offered this prayer service a couple months back and it was received well. I always look forward to the opportunity to pray together!
Bonfire and S'mores on October 2nd. We are still planning our bonfire for next Friday - one week from tonight. But I can't tell you where just yet. Here's the deal. We have been planning the event for months to be held at Jack and Sheri's house. However, with Jack's surgery this morning, they understandably had to bow out. Dan and DeeDee are "99% sure" they can have it at their place and will let us know for sure Sunday morning. However, if they cannot host it, Dave and Jen have told us they will offer their place. So we don't know where it will be just yet, but we know we're still going to do it... somewhere. Stay tuned!
Special End to 1 John Series on October 4th. Believe it or not, we will be coming to the end of this great teaching from the Apostle John next weekend. By then we will have invested 20 weeks of study. (They're all posted on YouTube here.) We'd like to do something a little different next weekend. We would like to give you the chance to respond. How has God worked in your life through this teaching? We are setting aside time in our worship service for you to share - but we'd like to have some idea of how much time we need to plan. Will you consider sharing your story? If so please contact Brandi Walker and let her know. She'll work with you on the details if you'd like to do it. I know it will be a blessing to me and the entire church!
I love our church. Sure hope you feel the same. Looking forward to seeing all of you Sunday! (Keep praying for Jack!) With affection, Pastor Mark
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