Prayer Burdens & Weekly Pursuit – Week 3 of April

Prayer Burdens:

Bangladesh

Pray for the weekly Bible reading group meeting for Muslim students to have more students join the meeting, come to know Christ, receive salvation, and be baptized through reading the Bible.

Pakistan

Pray for the propagation by the Hong Kong trainees 4/18–4/30, that the Lord would raise up coordinating saints and gain key families and university students.

Sri Lanka

Pray for the churches in Sri Lanka to register as government-recognized organization and the purchase of the Colombo meeting hall, so that the preaching of the gospel can not be frustrated.

Tajikistan

Pray for four gospel contacts to enter into the kingdom of God through baptism.

Timor-Leste

Pray for the saints to set apart their time to attend the group meeting every Friday evening.

Turkiye

Pray for the gospel contacts to be set free from national characteristics and religious concepts, that they can have stable home meetings with the saints.

Weekly Pursuit:

Verses:

Eph. 4:8 Therefore the Scripture says, “Having ascended to the height, He led captive those taken captive and gave gifts to men.”

Excerpts:

Ephesians 4:8 reveals an important principle that it was only after Christ on the cross had defeated and captured God’s chosen people that Christ led them to the heavens as His captives in His train of vanquished foes and made them gifts to His Body. We should apply this principle to ourselves; we should consider in our actual experience whether Christ has defeated us. Experientially speaking, if Christ has not defeated us, we cannot be led in His train of vanquished foes. Because Christ on the cross defeated all His enemies, He is victorious in the universe and has gained the ground to fill all things in the universe. But He may not be victorious in us and may not have ground in us, because we have not been subdued by Him in our experience. In order for us to function as a gift to the Body, we must be conquered and subdued by Christ. It is not until we become willing to be captured by Christ that He has the ground and standing to make us gifts to the Body. We must pray to the Lord from the depth of our being, “I surrender to You. I am defeated by You. I am captured by You.” We all need to be thoroughly defeated, captured, gained, and taken over by Christ. When we are willing to be subdued and captured by Christ, we will give Christ the ground to establish us as gifts to His Body. The more Christ ascends and descends within us, capturing and vanquishing us, the more He fills us with Himself to constitute us as gifts to His Body. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 340)