City Nights
What are City Nights? These are going to be nights where we are calling all Christians in our city to come together and pray that the strongholds of sin in our city would be broken and that there would be an awakening among those who are hopelessly lost and comfortably found.
Why? The local church here in McDonough is in desperate need of an awakening. It’s time for the Church that’s been lulled into becoming formal, cold, and careless, to regain its urgency, fire, and zeal.
The Focus For Tonight: A Movement of Disciples Making Disciples
One of the unfortunate things about many local churches is that discipleship has been reduced to a canned program. When this happens, many in the church end up sidelined in a spectator mentality that delegates disciple-making to pastors and professionals, ministers and missionaries. But this is not the way it’s supposed to be. Making disciples is far more than a program. It is to be the mission of our lives. It should define us. A disciple is a disciple-maker. The great commission charge to “go and make disciples” (Matt 28:18-20) is for all who would follow Christ. If we haven’t answered Christ’s call to lead others to surrender to Him, then our own surrender to Him should be called into question.
Imagine how our city would look and feel different if followers of Christ stopped ignoring and began obeying His most basic command. What would it look like if each follower of Jesus could at any given moment, answer these 2 questions –
1. Who is discipling me? and 2. Who am I discipling?
Anyone who embraces Jesus’ call to make disciples enters into one of life’s most rewarding, yet challenging journeys. Tonight as you walk and pray, be reminded that answering Jesus’ call to follow him and make disciples is one step at a time. This discipleship journey requires individual movement if the collective movement of discipleship is ever to happen. Picture yourself on a virtual prayer walk, and at each stop along the way, you will be prompted to pray for a specific aspect of being a disciple who makes disciples.
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Stop 1 -Start Where You Are and Embrace The Call
Matthew 28:18-20 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
2 Corinthians 5:17-20 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”
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Stop 2 – Parking Lot Facing the Road
Begin to look outward more than inward. Found people find people. See each car containing a soul that Jesus gave his life to save. Beg Jesus to break your heart in a way that leads you to reach out your hand to begin taking hold of the call to make disciples. As you look at the cars, ask Jesus to bring names and faces of 2 people you should disciple to mind.
Luke 14:23“And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.”
Matthew 9:37-38 “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Romans 1:16 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
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Stop 3 – The Cross at the Front of the MCC Building
As you look at the cross with the building in the background, pray that Jesus would start a discipleship movement through you that has less to do with what happens in a building and more to do with what happened on the cross. Pray that Jesus would use you to make disciples who embrace and engage the call of Jesus through the local church here in McDonough.
Matthew 16:18b “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
1 Peter 2:5 “And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God.”
Ephesians 2:19-22 “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
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Stop 4 – The Wilderness (Back Corner of Building, Face out Towards the Woods)
The call to make disciples is not an easy one. At times you will have to walk with people through their own wilderness experiences of failure, loss, sin, and struggle. Pray that Jesus will use you to help guide people through life’s toughest times.
Galatians 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
James 1:2-5 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”
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Stop 5 – The Next Generation (Facing the Playground at the Back of the Building)
This faith we have is not meant to merely be held. It is meant to be shared and passed down from generation to generation. You will know you have been used by Jesus to make a disciple when you see them making a disciple of Jesus. This is how discipleship becomes a movement of multiplication and not just addition.
Psalm 145:4 “One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts.”
John 15:16 “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.”