Every week I pray a very similar prayer leading up to the weekly worship experience. I pray for…
Presence :: We are desperate for the presence of God. If God doesn’t show up in a big way – then we have wasted our time. We do everything we can to operate with excellence; however, apart from the presence of God – it is meaningless.
People :: We unapologetically pray for more people. There are a TON of individuals who are far from God in Acworth. As a result, we work hard to invest in their lives - so that God would continue to send them our way.
Power :: We don’t just want God to show up, we want Him to show off! We desire for people to be changed from who they are to who God desires them to be. The words spoken during the course of that hour are powerful words. Words that bring life, hope, peace, and salvation. We don’t take that lightly. God’s power exhibited is an incredible thing – and we do not want it to be a rare occurence!
If God doesn’t show up in a big way – THAN we have wasted our time.
You need the conditional ‘then’, not the comparative ‘than’. ‘If…then’ sentences are composed of a protasis (the ‘if’ clause) and an apodasis (the ‘then’ clause), the apodasis of which indicates what will happen if the protasis is fulfilled.
There are a TON of individuals who are far from God in Acworth.
Do you mean the cumulative weight of all such individuals? If so, you are opening yourself up to criticisms of slim-biased outreach. That is, you seem to indicate, from this sentence, that only those weighing tons are far from God. To me, this is especially offensive and I would take issue with the notion that those of us on the ‘TON’ side of the scale can’t be close to God. I mean, I know you’ve always had a good figure, but do you really think I can’t be close to God because I tip the scale the other way?
I suppose you also could have meant that there are a large NUMBER of individuals. In which case I would ask, how do you know? Have you counted all individuals personally, or are you relying on the statistics of research conducted by anti-God, Satan-worshipping government agencies? You say there are a large NUMBER, but I say, in the words of the immortal Kip, ‘Like anyone can really know that.’