"Keys To The Game" this fall at The Bridge

Most of you know that I’m passionate about sports, though I don’t watch nearly as many games as I used to. However, once the NBA season starts next month, I will try to catch some Toronto Raptors games. A staple on Raptors broadcasts are “The Keys to the Game”. This is a little segment early in the game where the commentators identify three keys the Raptors need to focus on to win the game. As we enter the fall season as a church, I want to offer my own “keys to the game” for The Bridge. These are the practices I believe will be key for our church to be who God wants us to be. They’re practices I want to encourage each of you to engage with, starting already this coming week. Here they are:

This is so important I almost made prayer the topic of all three keys. Instead, it just gets repeated three times in this first point. I can’t emphasize enough that if we want to see God do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine (more on that in this Sunday’s sermon), we must pray. If we want to experience deliverance from the things that hold us in bondage, we must pray. If we want to see healing, we must pray. If we want to see the lost come to salvation in Christ, we must pray. If we want our church to be protected from the schemes of the evil one, we must pray. If we want to be rescued from temptation, we must pray. If we want to be filled by the Holy Spirit, we must pray. Apart from prayer, we will be left to meet the challenges of life and faith in our own strength. I’ve seen what I can accomplish of lasting worth on my own. It’s not much. Therefore, we must pray.

A bunch of years ago, we established a rhythm as a church to help us emphasize prayer at crucial points of the year: the fall kick-off, the new year, and the week leading up to Easter. During each of these weeks, we do a week of 24/7 prayer. What that means is that people from our church are praying for our church and community 24 hours a day for that whole week. It’s not that one person is doing it, it’s that as many people as possible sign up so that the chain of prayer is unbroken. You can find that link here:

You can pray anywhere, by yourself or with others. I think our record is having a total of 106 different people sign up. Let’s break that record next week! We also have a bunch of open prayer and worship gatherings throughout the week, including Monday at noon and Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings at 7pm. We’d love to see you join us for those.

Participating in prayer in some way next week doesn’t mean that the job is done, prayer is completed, we’ll pick it up again in January. The intention with weeks like this is to cultivate a culture of prayer in our church that extends beyond one week. Once again, if we want to see God do anything of lasting value here at The Bridge, we must be a people of prayer.

God made you for a purpose, to bear His image. He put us on this earth to be His representatives, to walk in relationship with Him and reflect His character in the world. In other words, He put us here to know Him and make Him known. Our sin distorts that image and misdirects our purpose so that we begin living for our own glory, status, and pleasure. However, God sent His Son to restore us to that original created purpose. He saved us so that we could once again know him and make him known. The purpose of that very brief biblical summary is to say that we are created and saved for a purpose that extends beyond our own little lives. We have been given gifts so that we can bless and serve others, revealing something of God’s own character to the world. When you give- whether it’s with money, time, or abilities- you are actually fulfilling why God put you here in the first place.

If you’re part of our church family but are not currently serving at The Bridge Church in any way, I encourage you- no, I urge you- to change that. It doesn’t need to be in some grandiose way. It may be something that seems small, though it may grow from there. After all, Jesus said that those who are faithful with little can be entrusted with much (Luke 16:10). You can start the conversation simply by filling out a serve card here:

In Philippians 3, Paul writes these words:

10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Did you catch that? Paul- the apostle, the church planter, the author of half our New Testament books, the guy who saw the resurrected Jesus, the guy authorized by God to break new ground with the Gospel- hadn’t obtained his goal. He didn’t fully know Jesus. He hadn’t arrived in his discipleship. He was still in process, but he wasn’t discouraged by that. He assumed this would be the case for the entirety of his life. He was straining toward what is ahead, determined to press on toward this goal.

What would this look like for you? What would it look like to not be complacent or apathetic in your faith, but to strive forward in genuine spiritual growth? I want to suggest that at least one way is to make sure you’re connected with other followers of Jesus and growing together with them. We have so many ways to do that at The Bridge. You’ll hear about a newcomers’ lunch next Sunday. You’ll hear about a baptism class coming up soon. You’ll hear about a marriage equipping program and a newcomers’ group, as well as a wide variety of community groups. If your only connection to The Bridge is the occasional Sunday morning service, you are missing an incredible opportunity to grow in your understanding and relational knowledge of the God who made you. Make the decision this fall to connect.

So those are my “keys to the game”: pray, serve, and connect. If each of us commits to those practices, hell will quake in its boots as the Kingdom of God moves forward in North Vancouver through our church, all by the power of the Holy Spirit.