Your unanswered prayer is not a verdict.
Grace and peace to you this week. Rain hit our attendance on Sunday. It did not hit the Spirit of the Lord. He showed up on every screen and in every living room where somebody logged on. If you were there, thank you. If the weather kept you out, keep reading, because I'm not letting you miss what He said. One church, two campuses, one family. Storm or sunshine, you belong to it. Church News: We're Back in the Room October 11Put it on your calendar now. Our next in-person gathering is Sunday, October 11, at 10:30 AM Central in McCook, and it streams online at the same time. Same morning, Reconnect begins. Come to the building, or log on from wherever you are. Either way, you are expected. Mars Hill Chicago, 7941 47th Street, McCook, Illinois. CHECK YOUR SOURCE, Week 4: IF IT'S GOD IT WILL BE EASY IS A LIEYou signed something because you were sure. A lease. A resignation letter. A text you can't unsend. Then the money didn't come, and the first thing that cracked wasn't your bank account. It was your confidence that God talks to you at all. Or you're the other one. You did hear from God. You started. It got expensive, and you quit at month four because somebody told you that if it's God, it flows. Sunday we put three sayings on the screen. God is about to fund the move He told you to make. Speak it into existence. If it's God's will, it will be easy. Not one of them is in your Bible. Then we read the one sentence where Paul puts an open door and a crowd of opponents in the same breath. And he stayed. "There is a wide-open door for a great work here, although many oppose me." (1 Corinthians 16:9, NLT) Opposition is not a verdict on direction. An open door can still have people standing in it. Write this down: Human confidence becomes dangerous when it wears God's name tag. Your practice this week: take the one decision you are calling God's will and run it through four tests. Scripture. Wise counsel. Fruit. Calling. Write down what each one says. On paper, not in your head. Your head negotiates. Paper doesn't. Watch the ReplayRain kept you home, or you only caught part of it? This is your seat. Pull it up tonight with your Bible open to 1 Corinthians 16. 👉 Watch "If It's God's Will, Is It Supposed to Be Easy?" on YouTube Go deeper: Your Two Weekly Growth ToolsSunday lasts about thirty minutes. Your week lasts 168 hours. By Tuesday lunch, most of what you heard is gone. Not because you didn't care. Because nothing carried it into Monday. These two tools do the carrying. This week they matter more than usual, because this week you are putting a real decision on paper. The 5-Day Devotional. Two minutes a day, five days, built on Sunday's message. Read it before you open anything else on your phone. Two minutes. You've spent longer than that on worse. 👉 Start the 5-Day Devotional The Sermon Application Guide. This is where the message stops being something you heard and becomes something you did. Open the folder, grab the guide, and keep it next to your Bible. 👉 Get the Sermon Application Guide Pick one today. Better yet, pick both. Don't let Sunday die in the parking lot. Save the Date: Reconnect Starts Sunday, October 11Nobody drifts on purpose. You didn't decide to stop praying. You got busy, then tired, then quiet. One missed morning turned into a month. Now God feels like somebody you used to talk to every day. That doesn't fix itself. Somebody has to put it on the calendar. So I did. Reconnect is a six week Life Group reset. Six Sundays. Six honest conversations. Six next steps small enough to actually take. The Sunday message sets the theme, your group talks it through and practices it together, and every person walks out with one challenge for the week. ⓵ October 11: Reconnect with God (prayer and worship) Here is what Week 1 asks of you: ten quiet minutes with God, on three days. Thirty minutes total. You will spend more than that scrolling before you get out of bed this week. Three ways in, so nobody gets left outside: In person. A real room, real people, one table. You don't need to have it figured out. You need to show up honest and take one next step. And to every Life Group leader who said yes: you don't have to teach a second sermon. You have to be there and ask good questions. That's the whole job, and it matters more than you know. 👉 Your move today: reply to this email with the word IN. Tell me whether you want an in-person group, a virtual group, or the self guided track, and our team will get you placed before October 11. This SundayCHECK YOUR SOURCE, Week 5: GOD SAID NO You have been carrying a no you never told anybody about. A prayer you stopped saying out loud. A diagnosis that didn't change. A marriage, a child, a door that never opened. And somewhere along the way, somebody told you that if you had enough faith, you would have gotten the yes. Sunday we close CHECK YOUR SOURCE with the hardest sentence in the series. Paul asked God three times. The answer was no. And nobody in this house questions Paul's faith. Online only this Sunday, October 4, 10:30 AM Central. Come with one name in mind, the one person you could tell the truth to. Pick your screen: 👉 Website: marshillchicago.org Thank you for holding this house upThis is a hybrid church with two campuses: the room in McCook and the campus that's wherever you're sitting right now. Your prayers and your giving keep both of them open, whatever the forecast says. Give at marshillchicago.org/giving, or text MHGIVE to 33777. 👉 Give here Here's where I'll leave you. Rain thinned the crowd on Sunday and God still showed up. The no you've been carrying has thinned your confidence, and He is still in the room. Bring it Sunday. Pastor Clarence E. Stowers, Jr. P.S. Know somebody who quit praying about something because the answer was no? Forward this to them. They don't need a lecture. They need to know they are not the only one carrying it. A word from this week's sponsor This letter lands in your inbox free, and part of what keeps it that way is the sponsor below. This week it's Morning Brew, a daily newsletter that gives you the business and tech news in a few minutes instead of a few hours. Take ten seconds to see what they're about. |