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Just about every active church member I know would love to see more people attending his or her congregation.

The challenge, of course, is be the type of believer that influences others to do just that.

I’ve been wanting more people to attend church since I was a kid. Whenever I’ve been successful in my efforts to bring them to church with me, I’ve been grateful to God for His grace in giving me the right words and right timing to plant the right seeds of influence.

Ultimately, of course, people came to church with me not because they were seeking to learn more about me, but instead about God and about how they might find a caring place to belong.

This desire for more people to experience the peace and joy and purpose that I have in Christ is what triggered my spirit this morning while reading from Zechariah 8 in the Old Testament.

The prophet is recalling what the Lord revealed to him in a vision regarding a time of peace for Israel, something greatly desired by the nation so filled with turmoil in previous centuries because of spiritual rebellion.

As the nation conformed to a pattern of truthfulness and concern for each other, periodic religious festivals would become times of gladness rather than times of sadness.

I want to share a longer passage with you just now and I hope you’ll read it:

This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Many peoples and the inhabitants of one city will go to another and say, ‘Let us go at once to entreat the Lord and seek the Lord Almighty. I myself am going.’

“And many peoples and powerful nations will come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Almighty and to entreat Him.”

“This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In those days 10 men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.'” (vv. 20-23)

I want to ask you to join with me in praying for God’s leading so that the communities around our congregations will see us as people with lives saved, guided and blessed by God.

The unsaved people around us will be more likely to seek God through prayer if they see us seeking God through prayer and then we remember to tell others of how God has blessed us.

The world is really good at talking trash and trusting lies, but sooner or later, just about everybody outside of Christ will periodically ask a sincere Christian to pray for him or her.

Perhaps that unsaved person will even subtly probe about how he or she might have inner peace.

Please make sure that when that random, divinely crafted moment occurs, you’ll be able and willing to simply explain why and how God is with you.

That person just might want to go with you to the place where you meet God with other believers, a place called church.

Then you can pour on the prayers that the person will ask God to be with him or her through a personal relationship with Immanuel, the “God with us” named Jesus.

As always, I love you
Martin

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