Grassroots Church | Thunder Bay, Ontario

Words in the Dark III: Part 8 – Petition and Deliverance

As we near the end of our prayer series, we come now to prayers for needs. Jesus’s prayer leads us from adoration to Kingdom praying, and then into our basic physical, emotional, and community requests. David’s Psalms give us these kinds of prayers: “May God arise”, and “God sets the lonely in families”, and “praise God who daily bears our burdens.” Check out Psalm 68 and its invitation for us to order our thoughts around specific needs, our needs, other people’s needs, and the nourishing presence of Christ, our daily bread of life.

Words in the Dark III: Part 7 – Abandonment

“Let Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” As we continue to learn the building-blocks of praying, we turn our attention to prayers of abandonment. Check out Psalm 141 and its prayers of devotion: teach me, set a guard, keep watch. What might it look like for us to learn how to pray “Your will be done.” The LORD’s prayer teaches us to abandon ourselves to God rather than feeling abandoned by him.

Words in the Dark III: Part 6 – Praise

This week, we begin the final leg of our journey into the Psalms, the presence of God, and the life of prayer. Taking a cue from David’s shameless dancing, we explore prayers of praise.  Check out Jesus’s prayer and how it starts with praise “Our Father, in Heaven, Holy is Your Name.” Jesus collects up all of the praises of the Psalms ––of God’s actions and characteristics (his name)––and teaches us how to adore God in a costly way that is more than worth it. Dive into Psalm 145 and see how David’s praise prepares our way to the start of our Lord’s prayer.

Words in the Dark III: Part 5 – Contemplation

Before we return back to training in the active phase of prayer, to Jesus’s template of praying, we remind ourselves again of how important it is to expect and aim for making contact with God in prayer. We are not simply asking God for things, we are not simply pouring our hearts out, though we do those things. We are seeking the God who we believe is searching us.

Words in the Dark III: Part 4 – The Inspiration to Pray

“Those who look on God are radiant,” says David in his Psalm 34. After we prepare and concentrate, prayer in the school of David is incomplete without us spending time in repose looking at God, making contact with him in our spiritual senses. It’s in this phase of praying where activity ceases and as one writer describes it, we “allow the Holy Spirit to act in the secret depth of our souls.”

Words in the Dark III – Part 2: Sincerity & Atmosphere

Pastor Keith continues exploring King David's school of prayer. With Psalm 5 and its mixture of lament and honesty, we see how David wanted more than anything to bow down toward God's holy temple. If we want to pray like David, we will come to God in sincerity and create the atmosphere of prayer, embedded in the middle of our life and its conflicts.

Words in the Dark III – Part 1: Recollection

As we kick off our second phase of our prayer series, we enroll ourselves in David's school of prayer. Everything about David leads to God: he notices God, he loves God, and he is never more alive than when he is encountering him. David's style of praying leads him to make contact with God, and that is how we should aim our prayer lives, if we want to develop in David's school of prayer.

Be a Dependent

In our yearly look forward, Pastor Keith opens Isaiah 11 once again and talks through Grassroots' vision and our desire to anticipate God's new creation now on earth as it is in heaven. Keith focuses on the branch of David, delighting in the fear of the Lord with a spirit of knowledge. Biblical knowledge is an encounter, not just information, and so we look to the cross to see just how dependent Jesus lived on God and God's presence in his life.

DON’T do the Math: A New Year’s Message

In our social media, self-image, control-focussed culture we struggle to discern God's call to examine ourselves in light of His mercy, grace, justice, and purposes. Through the messages of the OT prophets, the NT writings of Paul, and the words and life of Jesus, we can break free from patterns of control and consumerism and resolve to live out the love of Jesus in all areas of our lives.

Words in the Dark II: Part 3 – What Simeon Knew

This week, in our continued exploration of the Nativity story, we meet Simeon and Anna––two elderly Israelites who devoted their lives to prayer and waiting. They waited for the long-anticipated return of God. They waited for Israel to be free again to worship and rule with goodness over all the earth. We learn just how strong the Psalms were to inspire hope over hundreds of years of sorrow and suffering, as Pastor Keith offers us more advice on how to prepare to make Dec 24 and 25 holy days.