Season of Reflection & Repentance: Prayer Guide
August 16–September 14
During these four weeks, our church is reflecting on the mission entrusted to us by God to Preach Christ, Love One Another, Serve the City, and Plant Churches. As we bring him our shortcomings both corporately and individually, we’re also praying for him to renew our passion for him and for his work. The season will conclude with our annual Prayer & Fast on September 13–14th.
This guide is meant to help you think through each of our four missional pillars and how the Lord might be calling you to change in light of his mission for you. If you’d like, follow this guide to direct your personal reflections and prayer, or just use it as a starting point. Print copies are available on a weekly basis at the Sunday service on the table in the back of the sanctuary.
Week One | Week Two | Week Three | Week Four
Week One: Preach Christ
Monday, August 17
Read: Revelation 2:1–7
Ephesus was a powerhouse church. The apostle Paul helped plant the church within a context of deep-rooted idolatry and social conflict that you can read about in Acts 19. Not only did this church have a book of the Bible written to it (in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians), it boasted pastors of the highest caliber such as Paul, his right hand man Timothy, the great preacher Apollos, and later the apostle John. The Ephesian church was well trained doctrinally and toed the orthodox line in a tough cultural setting. And Jesus praises them for this.
But along the way, the church in Ephesus had become all about being right and had lost their genuine love and affection for Jesus. They were busy doing and believing all the right things. But they had forgotten the one they were supposedly doing all of this for. And Jesus calls them out for it.
It is far too easy, in all of our Christian busyness and learning, to forget the Christ we’re named after and claim to love. If we love someone, we don’t just want them to “research” us and give us gifts and dutifully show up for dinner while engaging only with their phone. We want them. In the same way, the Lord wants the hearts of his people. He wants our love, not just our performance and right thinking. Before we can truly preach Christ to others with our lives, we must love the Christ we preach.
Reflect, repent, pray:
How is my relationship with the Lord?
Am I faithful in my bible reading, prayer, and in worship with other believers? And why do I engage in these practices? Are they growing me not just in my knowledge of the Lord but in my love for him?
What are the persistent hinderances that get in the way of my relationship with the Lord? What does it look like to take these seriously and seek to address them?
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Tuesday, August 18
Read: Luke 10:38–41
Like the Ephesian church in Revelation 2, Martha had many good things to do the day Jesus came to visit. She was playing the consummate hostess to Jesus himself. And where Jesus went there was always a crowd. So Martha had her work cut out for her. But in all her busyness for Jesus, she missed out on being with Jesus.
We American Christians are especially busy for the Lord. We’re often in multiple bible studies, not counting the number of sermons and Christian podcasts we listen to. We’ve got devotionals and study resources that Christians in other parts of the world or times in history wouldn’t believe possible. And we’re often rightfully discontent if we’re not serving him in some way. But in all of that busyness around God’s word, how often do we simply sit with God’s word? For all the abundance of biblical resources we have and all our busyness around the word of God, often our personal bible reading lacks intimacy with the Lord because we don’t really slow down to be with him, to sit at his feet like Mary did and meditate on him through his word.
Reflect, repent, pray:
Do I prioritize the time I spend with the Lord in his word? And if not, why is that? What tend to be my go-to excuses here? What changes can I make to ensure I get time with Jesus?
What does being with Jesus look like in my bible reading? What do I hope for out of my time in the word?
As I think through all of my busyness around God’s word, how much of it is actually enriching my walk with him? How might that change for me as I begin the new academic year?
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Wednesday, August 19
Read: I Corinthians 1:18-31
The church in Corinth seems to have wanted to be the kind of powerhouse church that Ephesus was. They were, after all, an important cultural and commercial center in the ancient world. As a result, they were pretty prideful as a congregation and often struggled to accept God’s message and his ways––especially when those ways made them appear foolish, weak, or out of touch with their culture.
The apostle Paul (who wrote them this letter) very much understood the Corinthians. He too had once been extremely proud and ambitious and very much against the message that Jesus’ followers proclaimed: that God’s answer to our sin and this world’s brokenness was a crucified messiah. But that same Messiah himself had met Paul and turned his life upside down with Jesus’ upside down ways. Now Paul could celebrate the very truths he once considered so repulsive and shameful––because Jesus, the Truth himself, had changed Paul’s life. He preached Christ and Christ alone without shame and invited the Corinthians to live similarly.
Reflect, repent, pray:
Are there elements of God’s truth––who he says he is and the way of life he sets out for his people––that I find hard to stomach? Why is that?
In what ways do I find myself tempted to accommodate the culture around me rather than “preach Christ” in how I live for him?
Is Jesus the glory and boast of my life? Would those who do life with me say this is true about me? And if not, what might change in my day to day experience if Jesus were my glory and boast?
What else do I find beautiful about the good news as Paul describes it here? Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Thursday, August 20
Read: Acts 7 (especially vv. 51-60)
Stephen, one of the first deacons in Jesus’ church, had been hauled before the religious leaders of God’s people for preaching Jesus as the Savior. When called to make his defense, Stephen chronicles the history of God’s people which everyone in that room would have known by heart. But Stephen tells it with a different slant. He highlights how God’s people themselves so often resisted and fought their Lord and opposed the rescuers and messengers he sent to help them––climaxing in their murder of God’s Son himself! And how do the religious leaders of God’s people respond? Fulfilling the very pattern Stephen had laid out in his defense: killing God’s messenger.
What’s sobering about this story is that this wasn’t a pagan mob that killed Stephen but the religious leaders of God’s own people. In fact, as Stephen chronicles it, it is little surprise the Son of God would have died at the hands of God’s people themselves given their track record of resisting God! It’s a sobering track record and one that we who claim to be God’s people must actively work against in our own hearts.
Reflect, repent, pray:
Why do God’s people have this kind of history of resisting God’s word when he is preached to them?
Where in my life do I find myself resisting God (resisting Christ as he is preached to me)? Why is that? What lies at the heart of my resistance to him in this area?
What should my repentance in this area look like? Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Friday, August 21
Read: Hebrews 13:7-18
We don’t know who the author of Hebrews is. However, as he wraps up his masterful sermonic letter on Jesus as the fulfillment of all the Old Testament, he ends by pointing God’s people to their church leaders. In effect, the author is saying, “Jesus is the center of scripture, the center of his church, and center of how his people do life. And church leaders should reflect this.” The officers in Jesus’ church are to preach Christ with their words and also their lives, living out the example of Jesus and his ways for Jesus’ people. Living like Jesus often means suffering like Jesus, who suffered at the hands of his own people. But even with this as a likelihood, God calls church leaders to faithfully love, serve, teach, and keep watch over his people. He also calls his people to listen to, submit to, and imitate their leaders as those leaders preach Christ with their words and life.
In this passage, there’s a challenge for both God’s leaders and God’s people. God’s leaders are expected to live Jesus-like, exemplary lives of self-sacrificing service, which is a tough hurdle. God’s people are called to extend Jesus-empowered trust to their leaders by obeying and submitting to them, an even tougher hurdle. Yet so much of our credibility in Preaching Christ to those who don’t know him hangs on Christians living out Christ’s ways and being able to love, serve, and respect each other as King Jesus commands his people to––however counter cultural that seems. It is fitting that the author of Hebrews ends his tough appeal here by requesting prayer (v. 18), because we all need to be bolstered by prayer if we’re to live like this!
Reflect, repent, pray:
If you are a leader at IWC (or aspire to be one), take stock of your life. Can God’s people look to you and see Jesus and his ways modeled for them? Where do you yourself need help with this high calling, and what does repentance look like for you?
If you are a member of IWC, where do you find yourself suspicious or resisting of those authorities the Lord has placed in your life? Why do you think this is, and what does repentance look like for you?
Where do you see hope for change in this passage?
Week Two: Love One Another
Monday, August 24
Read: Acts 4:32-5:11
This passage isn’t the endorsement of communism that some want to make it. (The Bible has many verses preserving and honoring ownership, including the 8th Commandment and 5:4 of our own passage.) But this story does show just how radically Jesus reorients our priorities. While human beings are by nature pretty self-centered with our possessions, the members of the early church happily and on their own initiatives gave up their own advancement to see their needy siblings in Jesus served. Self-interest gave way to love for others in astounding ways that are hard for us to wrap our minds around today!
That’s what makes Ananias and Sapphira’s deception so shattering. They sought to put on a show of “loving one another” while really at heart they were self-interested, seeking the praise they saw others like Barnabas receive. When our acts of “love” for each other are really motivated by self like this, they really aren’t love. We can only truly love one another purely when our hearts are moved by the unconditional love our God has shown us in Jesus (see v. 33).
Reflect, repent, pray:
How am I showing my love for Jesus by showing love to his people? Where do I find myself falling short?
What would it look like for me to love Jesus’ bride here at IWC with this kind of radical love? What would repentance look like for me in this area?
How do I treat my money? What does that tell me about what is most important in my life?
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Tuesday, August 25
Read: Proverbs 10:18; 16:28; 17:4, 9; 18:21; 19:5
These verses are just a tiny sample of all that Proverbs (let alone the Bible) has to say about the way we use our tongues. How we use our words not only shows the level of mastery the Lord has given us over our sin-attracted hearts, it directly affects the spiritual health of those we are in community with. Our words are one of the primary ways we sin against each other, and our words are one of the primary ways we can bless and love one another.
Reflect, repent, pray:
As I take stock of how I’ve used my words this week, have I been an agent of life or death in the way that I’ve used my tongue? What does this assessment tell me about my heart?
What sins am I most likely to commit against God and others by misusing my words (e.g., self-promotion, cutting others down, lying, gossip, crude joking, complaining)? What does it look like to repent of these and use my tongue well?
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Wednesday, August 26
Read: Matthew 5:21-26, 18:15-35
When taken together, both these passages underscore how highly Jesus values unity in his family. Whether we are the one who has offended another (Matthew 5) or the one who has been offended (Matthew 18), our Lord commands us to not let any offense stand between us and another Christian. In fact, Jesus places such a high premium on reconciliation and unity that he commands his followers to pause their worship and go be reconciled first (5:23-24)! This is because unresolved conflict affects not only our own worship, but the worship of the broader church. As Jesus’ other dear friend John would write later, we cannot claim to love the Lord if we do not love those he loves (I John 3:10-18, 4:19-21). And we cannot claim to love another if we refuse to be reconciled to them.
Reflect, repent, pray:
Do I value unity as highly as Jesus does (cf., John 17:20-23)? Or would I rather get my own way? What do my actions over the past month reveal about my heart toward the Lord’s people? And what does that in turn reveal about my heart toward the Lord?
Is there anyone at IWC I have not reconciled with? If so, what steps can I take this week to make things right? (If you need help here, ask for input from a wise friend or your shepherding elder.)
Where do I see hope for change in these passages?
Thursday, August 27
Read: Ezekiel 34
In this sobering passage, the Lord takes his people to task for the ways they failed to love one another and instead were using each other to advance their own comfort. The invading Babylonians had just sacked Jerusalem for a 3rd and final time (see 33:21), and in the crises that followed, everyone was now thinking only about themselves and their own survival. But it was this very attitude that had lead to Judah’s destruction in the first place, as the Lord makes clear in this passage.
In the first half of the chapter, God first calls out the leaders of his people for using his people for their own comfortable advantage rather than shepherding them for their flourishing as the Lord had called them to do. He then calls out the people themselves (v. 17ff) for their own self-interest and seeking their own comfort and wellbeing at the expense of their sisters and brothers. The Lord’s answer to his people’s failures? To be himself the righteous shepherd his scattered sheep need. In John 10, Jesus would claim this role for himself, giving up his comfort to serve and protect his needy people.
Reflect, repent, pray:
How have I prioritized my own comfort over loving and serving my church family and being on mission with the Lord? Are there ways I use my siblings in Jesus instead of seeking their flourishing?
What comforts am I afraid to give up in order to serve and love others for their flourishing? What do I fear will happen if I’m not looking out for me, and why do I fear this?
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Friday, August 28
Read: I Corinthians 12:12-13:7
We Americans place a high priority on our independence and individualism. While there are some good and beautiful sides to this, the Lord did not create human beings for total autonomy, but to be dependent both upon him and on other people. (It’s part of the reason he placed us as babies in families and didn’t have us mature in a bio-pod out in some wilderness.) But if you struggle with this concept of being created for dependence, you aren’t alone. Most of us do, which is why the Lord gives us passages like ours today.
The Christians in Corinth all too often looked at each other as competition and vied with each other for a preeminent standing in the church. So their former pastor Paul uses the interdependence of the physical human body to illustrate our interdependence as Christians in Jesus’ “body.” If we’re to survive as Christians, we need one another as much as our body depends on each of its members functioning in order to keep us healthy. If a body part is cast off or shuts down, it affects the health and wholeness of the rest. In the same way, every Christian is necessary in Jesus’ church and has a vital role to play in the flourishing of other Christians.
Reflect, repent, pray:
How do I see my role in Jesus’ “body,” his church? Do I know the gifts the Lord has given me to use for others? Am I using these as he’s called me to? (If you haven’t yet, please fill out the gifts survey at ironworkschurch.org/skills.)
Am I involved in serving at IWC? If not, what holds me back? If so, have I allowed myself to feel superior toward those who aren’t serving?
Are there others in my church family that I look down on as less essential? Are there roles at IWC I choose not to play because I think they are beneath me? How does this passage challenge these attitudes?
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Week Three: Serve the City
Monday, August 31
Read: Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 5:14-16
If you’d like a longer treatment of Matthew 5:14-16, we covered this passage just a few months ago in our Sunday service.
From the moment the Lord began rescuing rebels in our sin-benighted world, his intent for his people has been that we would be lights. God would have his rescued kids reflecting his light and his glory, showing the beauty of his person and his ways to a world lost in sin’s confused night. It’s why when God saved his people out of Egypt, he placed them at the crossroads of three continents along an ancient and highly strategic highway: he wanted his people seen by the world so that the world might know him! It’s also why Jesus didn’t seek to hide his followers away from the world but commanded them to shine their lights brightly.
It’s tough to shine in darkness. And all through our history, God’s people have had to fight the temptation to cloister way from the dark world around us and all of its evils. But just like the Father gave his Son to be a light to the world by serving them (Isaiah 42), the Son has sent his people out to be lights in the same way: to show the world who our Jesus is by serving them (i.e.,“Serving the City” as the prophet Jeremiah puts it in Jeremiah 29).
Reflect, repent, pray:
Where do I see my own tendency toward cloistering away? Where does that desire come from? What does the Lord have to say to me about it?
Where do I feel a reluctance to “Serve the City” and why might that be the case?
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Tuesday, September 1
Read: Philippians 2:12–18
Again, we covered this passage two years ago during our Sunday service, so you can check out the fuller treatment of this passage here.
If you think back to yesterday’s themes, you can see the teachings the apostle Paul pulls from to encourage his discouraged siblings in Jesus who lived in Philippi. Internal strife in the church and external pressures from their community had knocked the church in Philippi off mission. So Paul had to remind them to live out their salvation, to live like the lights God had rescued them to be in contrast to the world around them.
A complaining spirit, like the one Paul warns his friends against, is one of the telltale signs that we’re beginning to drift from God’s mission. Mission is hard. But when we start complaining about how hard it is, then we’ve let our eyes fall from our Lord (who calls us to mission) to the trials that the enemy throws up in order to get us off mission. And like we’ve all experienced when we’re more interested in our phones than in the road we’re driving, once our focus is off, the mission is in jeopardy because we’re drifting.
So Paul calls his friends away from their complaining spirit and refocuses them on the mission by pointing them both to his own example of sacrificial suffering and, even more importantly, to Jesus’ example in the verses preceding ours (2:1-11). If you find yourself complaining, lift your eyes off the problems and hardships you’re focusing on and settle your gaze on your Savior––who not only calls us to mission but keeps us on course.
Reflect, repent, pray:
What do I find myself complaining about (IWC, the broader church, the culture, my family, etc.)? What does that show about my heart? How have I been off mission and how do I need course correction?
What steps can I take this week to course correct? How can I get back on mission to serve the city and shine God’s light as he calls me to?
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Wednesday, September 2
Read: Jonah 3:1-4:11, Jeremiah 29:4-14
Though separated by about two hundred years, these two passages have striking similarities and contrasts. In Jonah’s day, Nineveh was the capital of Israel’s arch rival, the Assyrian Empire, which would one day wipe out the northern kingdom of Israel and carry its people away into exile. Similarly, the prophet Jeremiah wrote his letter to God’s people from the southern kingdom of Judah who had been carried into exile by Babylon. Both Assyria and Babylon were existential threats to God’s people. So Jonah’s hostile attitude toward his enemy’s capital city was not only normal among the people in his day, it would have been our own gut response were we in their shoes!
Now contrast what we would consider Jonah’s natural response with the Lord’s own attitude in these two passages! Whereas our gut reaction would be to wish destruction on the city that opposes us, the Lord responds with compassion and calls his people to serve the city and seek the welfare of those who destroyed God’s own cities! So it isn’t surprising then, that centuries later in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus would call his followers to love their enemies and would then himself model that same love for his enemies.
Reflect, repent, pray:
When it comes to my attitude toward “the city,” who am I more like: Jonah or Jesus? In what ways have I been more ready to see the destruction of “the city” rather than working for its flourishing?
As I think about my neighborhood or broader community, where do I find myself feeling repulsed? Why is that? What needs to change both in me and in my community? How might God be calling me to be a part of that change?
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Thursday, September 3
Read: Acts 4:23-31
After Jesus’ return to the Father and the powerful outpouring of his Spirit at Pentecost, things were going gangbusters for the early church. Thousands upon thousands were flocking to the church as God worked incredible acts of healing and other miracles through the apostles (Jesus’s first friends and followers, specially chosen by Jesus to lead his people after his departure). But Acts 4 now records the first opposition Jesus’ followers experienced––and it was at the hands of their own religious leaders, the same men who had hung Jesus on a cross weeks earlier. These leaders were deadly serious when they warned Jesus’ followers to stop preaching about him…or else!
So how does the early church respond to this real threat not only to Jesus’ mission but to their very lives? They fall to their knees in desperate, dependent prayer. They acknowledge the hardship of their situation and God’s perfect, sovereign control over it. But what do they ask for? It isn’t for protection or that their sovereign God would make the opposition stop. Instead, they pray for courage to keep Serving the City with God’s word (i.e., Preaching Christ), trusting God to do his powerful work as he saw fit. They prayed for the one thing they needed to stay on mission: courage to do what they had been called to by their Jesus. And they left everything else––results, protection, the advance of the mission, all of it––in God’s trustworthy hands.
Reflect, repent, pray:
What am I scared of when it comes to doing life on mission? What experiences have I had of opposition that may have scarred me and are holding me back?
Where do I feel opposition in mission now? What kind of courage do I need to be on mission this week? Where am I assuming more responsibility for the outcomes of mission than is right?
What’s my prayer life look like right now? Do my prayers reflect the kinds of concerns I see in this passage? If not, why, and what should change?
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Friday, September 4
Read: Galatians 6:6–10
Gardeners know how discouraging gardening can be. For all the preparation of the soil, for all the money and energy and time spent on tending to your plants, often you don’t see the results you want. It’s all too easy to give up and let the weeds take over.
The same is true in our walk with the Lord on his mission. So much of the Christian life is about faithfully doing the next right thing without necessarily seeing the results of your faithfulness. Sometimes the results you hope for are years down the road. Or you may not even live to see them. Or, as we saw yesterday, you will very likely find yourself opposed by the enemy who hates faithfulness to God and who would love to thwart God’s mission. The road is long. The mission is challenging. But the Lord uses every act of faithfulness to move his kingdom forward. And this is why Paul echoes the call found all through the Bible: Be faithful! Don’t grow weary. Keep doing good. God guarantees reward. And there is no reward greater than God himself and growing in his likeness!
Note also that in v. 10 Paul calls us (in the words of our mission statement) to both Love One Another and Serve the City. We’re to do good especially to those of the “household of faith” but we’re called to do good to all, and to do it without giving up in discouragement.
Reflect, repent, pray:
As I examine the last five years, what has been my attitude toward being on mission? In what ways have I grown weary? When the mission feels arduous and the opposition is strong, what narratives do I tell myself (about the Lord, myself, the work he’s called me to)?
What “good” is the Lord calling me to do to “all” and to “the household of faith.” Are there ways I use my “weariness” to excuse me from God’s call to “Serve the City?”
Where do I see hope for change in this passage?
Week Four: Plant Churches
Monday, September 7
Conclusion: Prayer & Fast
September 13–14
Our season of reflection and repentance is concluding with IWC’s annual day of prayer and fasting, starting on Sunday, September 13th at 7pm, and ending with a potluck meal and prayer meeting on Monday, September 14th at 6p. Please join in to whatever extent you’re able!