What is the place and function of the gospel in the life of the local church?
Pray for Rain
One of the most underused resources in pastoral ministry today is prayer. Whether due to an overly packed schedule or raw negligence, many pastors and preachers do not enjoy the unction of the Spirit because they simply fail to ask for it.
God wants us to honor him in our ministries by asking for His blessing. He will not give His glory to another (Isa 48:11; cf. Ezek 36:22-32). This is why He will have us ask Him to reveal His Word to us and give us power and insight to preach and model it. The family analogy holds true here as well. God is our good Father, and He wants us to honor Him as such by asking for His blessing instead of presuming upon it.
Paul acknowledges this kind of dependence on the Spirit "...for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit... For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ" (1Cor 2:11-16).
