Download Forty Days Emphasis - First Baptist Church of Eagle Lake

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Prayer Guide
Forty Days Emphasis
2014
WEEK 1 - Our One Need
Scripture… “Pray without Ceasing” (1 Thess.5:17)
Reflection… “If prayer was the power by which the early Church flourished and triumphed, is it not the one need
of the Church today?”
Andrew Murray
DAY 1 – Confess that a clear mark of our desperate need for revival is our prayerlessness. Seek forgiveness that
the church in our nation rejects and neglects corporate prayer. Ask Him to move us to have the same priority for
prayer that He does.
“Saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”
(Luke 19:46)
DAY 2 – Beg God to cause us to go back to His Word to study the place God intends for prayer to have in the life
of His child and His church. Ask God to free us from our wrong attitudes concerning the absolute necessity of
continual prayer and from our false impression of prayer being an arbitrary demand by granting us a fresh
understanding of what prayer is and what our prayers can be.
“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your
Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
(Matthew 6:6)
DAY 3 – Beg God to help us take to heart that He still seeks for those who will give themselves to persevering
prayer for others. Ask God to stir up the gift of intercession in your own heart and in the lives of His people.
“There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your
face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.”
(Isaiah 64:7)
DAY 4 – Beseech the Lord to open our eyes and hearts to the needs around us that we would learn to pray as we
ought. Ask for a heart overflowing with God’s love poured out in fervent intercession for our nation.
“I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his
impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.”
(Luke 11:8)
DAY 5 – Entreat the Lord to help us understand that prayer is still God’s appointed means for drawing down His
blessings in power on ourselves and others. Beg God to grant us an understanding of the place prayer occupies in
God’s redemptive work.
“And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all
filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.”
(Acts 4:31)
DAY 6 – Seek forgiveness for the sinful prayerlessness of the church of North America. Ask God to light the fire of
prayer in our hearts.
“’And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the
land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none.”
(Ezekiel 22:30)
DAY 7 – Ask God to teach us that He still delights to give His Spirit to those who ask Him and that our lives and
work as His people are still as dependent upon His impartation of the Holy Spirit as they were in Pentecostal
times. Beg God for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
(Luke 11:13)
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WEEK 2 - Re-Imaging of God Scripture… “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and
truth.”
(John 4:24)
Reflection… “Throughout all history, no great revival has come to believers with a shallow, unbalanced view of
God and high tolerance of sin”…
Gregory Frizzell
DAY 8 – Implore the Lord to grant a reviving encounter with Him that would change the way we think about Him
and bring back a fear, awe and reverence for who He is.
“Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God
acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”
(Heb. 12:28-29)
DAY 9 – Seek grace to repent of re-imaging God making Him look less severe and distorting what He is like to
make us more comfortable in our sin. Ask God to restore biblical worship in our lives. Beg Him to revive us to
form and project a correct image of God to one another and to the world.
“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour
is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father
is seeking such people to worship him.”
(John 4:22-23)
DAY 10 – Implore God to grant us a willingness to repent of offering Him worship while we overlook questionable
things taking place in our midst that do not follow the scriptures. Beg God to enable us through His Spirit’s
guidance to make the changes needed to spend more time getting to know Him through His word. Ask Him to
bring us through a repentance that captivates us with His glory.
“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.”
(Isaiah 1:11)
DAY 11 – Plead with the Lord to help us return to the scriptural definition and practice of worship. Ask Him to
restore worship that causes us to compare what we do with the scriptures and cleanses us of comparing
ourselves with one another. Beg the Lord to empower prophets who will declare to us what God is like from the
scriptures.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy
and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be
transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is
good and acceptable and perfect.”
(Romans 12:1-2)
DAY 12 – Beg God to help us understand that when Israel profaned His name and gave the world the unbiblical
view of Him that He brought severe discipline upon then in front of the nations.
“And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which
you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when
through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.”
(Ezekiel 36:23)
DAY 13 – Make haste to beseech the Lord to forgive us for profaning His name by prayer, preaching and singing
that re-images Him.
“And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.”
(Exodus 34:8)
DAY 14 – Ask God to bring us back to God-centered, God-glorifying worship based on truth which produces
reverence and awe in us.
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
(John 4:24)
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WEEK 3 - Sinful Trivialization of God
Scripture… “True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth…
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(John 4:23)
Reflection… “It may well be revealed that the worst sin of the church at the end of the twentieth century has
been the trivialization of God. We need a revival that will bring back reverence for who He is.”
Ron Owens
DAY 15 – Beseech God’s forgiveness for our sin of trivializing God by worshipping an image of Him that is far less
than the God of the scriptures. Since our view of Him impacts how we worship Him, beg the Lord to help us have
a correct view of Him.
“But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve
them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going
over the Jordan to enter and possess.”
(Deuteronomy 30:17-18)
DAY 16 – Plead for God’s forgiveness for too often trying to adapt God to our ways rather than our adapting to
His and for our bringing God down closer to man’s level to make Him more accessible where reverence and awe
have been replaced with irreverence and familiarity. Beg God to help us know Him well enough to be able to
worship Him acceptably. “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a
living and holy sacrifice…
…And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your
mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God”
(Romans 12:1-2)
DAY 17 – Cry out to the Lord to help us know Him as He has revealed Himself in the scriptures that we may return
to Him.
“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
(John 17:3)
DAY 18 – Entreat the Lord to help us understand that most of our problems are due to losing sight of who He is.
Ask God to grant us a revival that will bring back the fear, awe, and reverence for who He is. “Then they will say,
‘Because they abandoned the LORD, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and
laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on
them.’”
(2 Chronicles 7:22)
DAY 19 – Pray for God to show each of us in the North American church how to know the Lord more deeply and
intimately. Ask God to help us know, understand, and recognize the wonders of His person more clearly. Beg Him
to help us know Him in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.
“That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in
his death….”
(Philippians 3:10)
DAY 20 – Ask God to help us have a fuller understanding of what worship is from His perspective that we may
offer Him acceptable worship. Beg Him to help us experience Him deeply in true worship.
“Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God
acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”
(Hebrews 12:28-29)
DAY 21 – Implore the Lord to help us return to His definition and requirements for spiritual worship. Beg God to
help us know Him.
“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth,
for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.”
(John 4:23)
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WEEK 4 - Entrenched in Complacency
Scripture… “At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent,
those who say in their hearts, ‘The LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill.’”
(Zeph. 1:12)
Reflection…The Lord will punish those who sit contented in their sins and are settled in their own lies.
DAY 22 – Ask God to give us understanding according to His word that He is a God, who threatens His vengeance
on wicked unbelieving people, who stand visibly in the world as His people and yet remain unrepentant bringing
forth bitter and poisonous fruit as He deals with them in His grace. Ask God to awaken us to His warnings.
“For they are a nation lacking in counsel...Would that they were wise, that they understood this, that they
would discern their future…
…Vengeance is Mine, and retribution, in due time their foot will slip; for the day of
their calamity is near….”
(Deuteronomy 32:28-35)
DAY 23 – Entreat the Lord to help us understand that as we flatter and delude ourselves remaining unrepentant,
that there is no lack of power in the Omnipotent God to bring us at once without warning into a sudden
unexpected destruction. Beg God to grant us a willingness to repent.
“Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment,
swept away utterly by terrors!”
(Psalm 73:18-19)
DAY 24 – Beg God to help us examine ourselves against the example of the Philadelphia church who exhibits a
clear complacency. Ask God to help us see how great the sin of complacency is. Beg God for a quickening
awareness of our deficiencies and needs… “For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not
realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by
fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your
nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove
and discipline, so be zealous and repent.”
(Revelation 3:17-19)
DAY 25 – Beseech the Lord to help us see that the history of Israel is full of examples of complacent attitudes and
the apostasy it led to. Beg God to stir up a holy dissatisfaction in our hearts and help us understand how lacking
we are in Christ-likeness. “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain
of Samaria, the notable men of the first of the nations, to whom the house of Israel comes!”
(Amos 6:1)
DAY 26 – Pray for God to help us understand the definition of complacency by looking at its synonyms:
bigheadedness, conceit, pompousness, pride, self-importance, self-love, and self-satisfaction. “Tremble, you
women who are at ease, shudder, you complacent ones; strip, and make yourselves bare, and tie sackcloth
around your waist.”
(Isaiah 32:11)
DAY 27 – Ask God to help us be moved to an honest self-examination. Beg God to deliver us from the delusive
thinking that a sin or weakness of ours is unimportant or non-existent. Beg God to return us to a right
relationship with Him.
“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about
yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”
(2 Corinthians 13:5)
DAY 28 – Implore God to awaken us from our spiritual drunkenness and drowsiness in sin and prosperity. Beg
Him to revive us and change the way we think about Him.
“The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: “Who among us can dwell with the
consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?”
(Isaiah 33:14)
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WEEK 5 - Pursuing Holiness
Scripture… “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”
(Hebrews 12:14)
Reflection… “If our churches have any hope of true revival, it must begin with a profound new holiness in us!”
Dr. Gregory Frizzell
DAY 29 – Seek God’s forgiveness for all the focus on programs and drawing crowds while we ignore the call to
repentance and to making disciples, not converts who evidence no true repentance. Ask God for a mighty
cleansing move of His Spirit in your life, your family, and in His church. Beg Him to quicken our hearts of the unconfessed sin quenching His Spirit in His church.
“Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek
the LORD, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.”
(Hosea 10:12)
DAY 30 – Cry out for help to understand that holiness is a person, the LORD Almighty and that when we are
asking for holiness we are asking for more of God Himself. Beg God to grant the type and quality of encounter
with Him through His word that would produce a repentance that will empty us of self and fill us with Jesus.
“…
…I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above
him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet,
and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole
earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the
house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell
in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
(Isaiah 6:1-5)
DAY 31 – Pray for God to tear down spiritual strongholds and identify, confront and overcome church-wide sin
problems that hinder our fellowship and usefulness to God.
“For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the
outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?”
(1 Peter 4:17)
DAY 32 – Implore God to impress upon our hearts the urgent need for revival and awakening. Beg Him to help us
feel the weight of how close we are as nations to catastrophic judgment. Ask God for a cleansing move of His
Spirit across North America.
“For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the
outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?”
(1 Peter 4:17)
DAY 33 – Entreat the Lord to impact our hearts with the truth that because of un-confessed sin and lack of
repentance the prayers critical to averting national judgment go unanswered. Beg God for a level of repentance
that will produce judgment averting intercessors.
“Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your
iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so
that he does not hear.”
(Isaiah 59:1-2)
DAY 34 – Beg God to bring us to repentance by awakening us to who He is in His holiness.
“Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14)
DAY 35 – Plead with God to thoroughly examine our hearts, thoughts, motives, and ways and to lead us in the
way everlasting. Beg the Lord to grant us the spiritual cleansing and repentance needed to bring revival and
awakening to our sin hardened nations.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way
in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
(Psalm 139:23-24)
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WEEK 6 - A Revival of Holiness
Scripture…
… “…
… You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16)
Reflection… “No words can express the urgent nature of our present need for massive revival…. America is
indeed poised on the very brink of catastrophic judgment.”
Dr. Gregory Frizzell
DAY 36 – Seek forgiveness for the pride that fights against God’s eternal purposes and will. Beg God for a new
revelation of His holiness that would judge and slay sin in us.
“But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy,
for I am holy.”
(1 Peter 1:15-16)
DAY 37 – Implore God to overwhelm us with His holiness and to bruise us with such sorrow for sin that it would
cast us before Him in utter self-abasement. Ask Him to help us discover how much of self and sin is still in us. Beg
Him to raise-up leaders who will lead us into deep cleansing and revival.
“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the
high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
(Isaiah 57:15)
DAY 38 – Beg God to help us take to heart that Jesus’ sanctifying of Himself culminated in the cross. Ask God to
sanctify us by helping us know Him in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.
“And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
(John 17:19)
DAY 39 – Beseech God to search out the self-gratification that defiles our flesh and the pride that defiles our
spirit. Ask Him to bring us great conviction of such sinful contamination. Beg Him for a mighty cleansing move of
His Spirit upon His church.
“Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit,
bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
(2 Corinthians 7:1)
DAY 40 – Cast yourself upon God asking Him to confront specific sin in us by a concentrated exposure to His
word. Ask Him to purify and separate us to Himself through His word.
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
(John 17:17)
WORDS OF WISDOM FROM GOD’S WORD…
God disciplines us for our own good, that we may share in his holiness...
“For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good,
that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but
later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift
your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that
what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and
for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”
(Hebrews 12:10-14)
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