I recently participated in a 21 day fast that our Church does at the beginning of each year, from 6am-6pm. We always get praise reports and people receive direction from the Lord. I’ll do a devotional on fasting another time but I wanted to let you know a revelation God gave to me during this fast as I was praying.
I always pray for the Church that I attend that God would send new visitors every week. One day God spoke to my heart and said, “You’re praying for new visitors every week and that’s what you’re getting; visitors! Pray for new Members instead of visitors!”
The definition of visitor is: someone, such as a tourist, who comes to a place temporarily. A visitor is a “viewer”, “onlooker”, “spectator”.
A member is one who joins a group to “participate” in a particular activity. On the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 it says that “they were all together in One Accord”, they all had the same purpose and then something happened. They were not in discord, they were in accord! God gives a Pastor a vision of what He wants to happen in that particular Church so the members of that Church participate in the vision that God has given him.
Visitors come to view but members join in and help get the job done! If the members keep their eye on the vision, there will be no division!
My husband and I visited Port Isabel, Tx. many years ago, we were tourists there and we loved the area so much that we decided to move there and we did! We were no longer visitors at that point, we settled into a home, got jobs and plugged into the area and become participators of what was happening there. If we would have just continued to go down there once a week every year we would have continued to be visitors.
How many of you know that we get what we “say”? We were getting a lot of tourists at our church…but now we will get participators!
“Pray for new members, not visitors!”
Linda Weber – Sole Purpose Ministries