7 Tests For A God-Glorifying Ministry - 1 Peter 4:11 Series

1 Peter 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's multifaceted grace. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

Review

Your Gift in Prayer Group

We Need Grace from all the Gifts

For those of you who are new today we have been studying verse by verse through the book of 1 Peter, and the last two weeks we have been studying verse 10 in chapter 4 about ministry in the church. Ministry is when God distributes grace to His people – especially through the use of your spiritual gifts. I desperately need a good, well-balanced diet of the various different forms of God’s grace. And each one of us has been entrusted with one of those forms. You are a steward of that form of grace, which means you decide how (or whether) it will be doled out to the rest of us. So if we are going to be a healthy church – a loving church, a discerning church, a holy church, an effective church – a church that is pleasing to the Lord, then we are going to have to be a church where everyone is serving with their gift.

The Prayer Group Ministry is Designed to be a Platform for Ministry

Now, in every church I have ever attended, this has been a problem – large percentages of the body not serving in ministry. The way churches are typically set up, you come together on Sunday and sing and listen to a sermon, and if your gift is not preaching or leading worship or working with kids – when do you have a chance to use your gift? You just sit and listen and go home. That is a recipe for a grace-starved church. So when we planted Agape, we cried out to God and asked Him to show us a way to create a structure that would give all the saints a context in which they could use their gifts. And the answer that came from those prayers was the prayer group structure that we have. Is that a perfect solution? No. Are there drawbacks to that system? Plenty. Does it guarantee people will use their gifts? No. But one of the purposes of the way the prayer groups are designed is to at least give each of you an opportunity to use your gift.

So you sit down with your group, we go around the circle and ask, “How can we pray for you this week specifically regarding your walk with the Lord?..,” and each person shares briefly about where they are spiritually and gives a request. Then what happens? Over the course of the six months that you are in the group with that person, each person in the group begins to respond to that person. Maybe he needs encouragement. Maybe he needs correction or a gentle rebuke. Maybe some instruction from God’s Word. Maybe he needs compassion and understanding. Maybe he just needs prayer – someone to care enough to really pray hard for him. Maybe he needs someone to come over to his house and help him get something fixed. Maybe he needs financial help. Maybe he needs a listening ear – someone who will just spend a little time with him once in a while.

We are all called to do those things for one another, and the way you do it will be flavored and shaped by your spiritual gifts, which will bring special grace to that person. Obviously most of that cannot happen during the prayer group hour. It’s only one hour. Sometimes we are able to minister to one another briefly right there during the group time. But mostly the hour we are together just gets the ball rolling for later in the week. When we are together the needs become known, relationships are built, love increases, and the opportunities to serve one another become evident. So the prayer groups are designed to give a platform where each one of you can spring into action with your spiritual gift to dispense grace to the rest of us.

And they give you a specific group of people to focus on. You cannot meet every need in the church, but your prayer group is small enough where if you mainly focus on them, that’s doable.

What it Looks Like