We all know what it’s like to be hurt by someone who just couldn’t listen long enough to understand us. Maybe in their attempt to be right, they damaged a relationship that could have been saved with a little patience and curiosity. You’ve probably been on the other side of that coin too. Taking the verbal offense may have won the argument, but you lost relationally. What if we didn’t settle for being right, but tried to make things right instead? The longer we listen, the more we learn, and the better chance we have of protecting ourselves from our own big mouths.

Sometimes church people get confused about what it is they are supposed to be doing. Jesus, however, was very clear about what he expected — commanded — his followers to do. Getting and maintaining clarity on Jesus’s mandate for his followers is essential if we desire to fulfill his mission for us in this world.

God wants us to pray. He wants us to present our needs and requests to him. God’s desire for our prayers, however, goes far beyond simply presenting our needs and requests to him. God also has a strategic purpose for our prayers. 

Christians in the first century were not content with simply gathering in a holy huddle. From the beginning, they were on a mission to spread the Gospel of Jesus to anyone who would listen. Even though they were persecuted and martyred for spreading the Gospel, they would not stop. But why? What motivated them to a continue to call people to repentance and to surrender their lives to Jesus? What can we learn from their example?