Lord, Make Us Dangerous!

This weekend we close out our One Prayer series. The message this week is going to come from Perry Noble. His One Prayer for the church is Lord, Make Us Dangerous. I love that prayer. If there is one thing the church as a whole generally is....it sure ain't dangerous. We can be religious, stuffy, boring, old fashioned, out of touch, unkind, uncaring, and unconcerned but, dangerous isn't a word we associate with the church (except of course the more kooky ones that play with snakes!)

We need to become more dangerous. We live in a world where we are playing it safe and doing the things that tickle our ears while the rest of the world is on the fast track to a place called Hell. We cannot allow that to happen. We need to step up to the plate and refuse to allow our personal preferences in worship, dress, history, and everything else churchy to get in the way of our reaching out to those in our sphere of influence.

There was a time in my life when I was very passionate about the way we did church. I was proud of our heritage and thought that others were missing out because we had something they didn't have. While part of me still thinks that they are missing out, I am not quite as proud about it. To be honest there isn't time to be proud about it and I'd rather not worry about what the already convinced are "missing out on.' I'd rather concern myself with working to reach people that are not yet convinced.

I pray along with Pastor Perry that we would indeed become a dangerous people. We would be willing to step up and step out. We'd be willing to cast aside our restraint and go after the one that got away. We'd forget about our preferences and concern ourselves with the preferences of those who do not yet know Christ because at the end of the day that is where he'll be. Reaching out to those people that no one else wants to reach.