Here are the ways we prayed and listened during week one. Would you pray along? If you have thoughts, ideas, or impressions from your prayers, please leave them in a comment.

Directions for Prayer

• Thank God for specific blessings and divine activity in Grace’s past.
• Allow God to bring to your mind the specific unique character of Grace and give Him credit for His creation of our church.
• Think through the ways God has used Grace to grow your faith and offer Him thanks.
• Ask God for forgiveness for anything in Grace’s past that may be hindering us and ask for His help.
• Thank God for specific people, leaders and friends and Godly servants, who have been important to your spiritual growth and the identity of our church.

Directions for Listening

• What are the characteristics of Grace that identify us as a body?
• Which of those characteristics are an indispensable part of who God has created us to be?
• Grace will change because change is inevitable. God wants us to change for the better. But what things about Grace do you hope will never change?
• How has Grace been different than other churches you have attended? What explains the difference?

Directions for Action

• What can we do to ensure our unique identity as a body?
• Pray that God would help us pursue our unique role in His kingdom.
• Ask God to show you the things in our past, or in your past, that need to change for us/you to love Him better.
• Ask God to show you how you can meet Him in His plans for Grace.

Grace On Display

Danny M. and Phil F. both put themselves on a plate today and offered us all a taste of God's grace.

It's what I love about GraceStories: God, reflected through a window, a moment. You can read about God's grace in books, hear about it in sermons, study it in libraries and seminaries, even meditate on it in Scripture. But then grace comes right out and knocks you on your can through someone's story, it's like nothing else. It's evidence that it's real, right here, right now, among us.

You have a story, too. Just as powerful, just as grace-full. Someone--lots of someones--need to hear your story. It may be the only way grace will have a chance to floor them.

Thanks, Danny and Phil.