Crossroads Church

Today we worshiped at Crossroads Church, 707 Thomson Park Drive, Cranberry Township, PA 16066, 412.494.9999, http://crossroadsumc.org/locations/cranberry/, Mike Arnold, Campus Pastor.

Scripture - NLT

James 5:16 – l

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.

Joshua 6:1-5 –

Now the gates of Jericho were tightly shut because the people were afraid of the Israelites. No one was allowed to go out or in. But the LORD said to Joshua, “I have given you Jericho, its king, and all its strong warriors. You and your fighting men should march around the town once a day for six days. Seven priests will walk ahead of the Ark, each carrying a ram’s horn. On the seventh day you are to march around the town seven times, with the priests blowing the horns. When you hear the priests give one long blast on the rams’ horns, have all the people shout as loud as they can. Then the walls of the town will collapse, and the people can charge straight into the town.”

2 Corinthians 10:4 –

We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments.

Bob’s thoughts:

It was a special worship experience for me to be able to witness our daughter and her husband join church today. When I came to Christ, our daughter was just finishing the communicant’s class and we joined church together, a special, warm memory for me.

We were cordially greeted by two of the pastors when we came in and engaged by the woman preparing coffee. A number of others came by and joined us in conversation and when we said we were there to watch family join their church, there was even more connection: we are in the same small group, husbands meet on Fridays, and of course the antics of our youngest granddaughter.

Was interesting that the sermon was also on connection, our connecting in prayer. A step we have all been guilty of with an overwhelming problem, we try to fix it instead of stepping back and letting God work.

God will help us break the strongholds in our lives, be they bad habits or transgressions that we can’t get past. We need to step back out of God’s way and let Him work miracles.

Sometimes when we are called to read our Bible or pray for a time period, I realize that I just can’t imagine trying to get through a day without God’s Word and prayer time.

It’s great to worship here and feel God’s Presence, I am happy our children have found a good home.

Jan’s thoughts:

Today we were privileged to worship and celebrate with our daughter and son-in-law as they joined this church.

Although we arrived quite early, several people greeted us warmly as they prepared coffee, snacks, and made general arrangements for those who would soon arrive.

I truly enjoy the music here. The songs themselves lean toward the contemporary, but even the traditional (such as today’s “Holy, Holy, Holy”…one of the most traditional I know) feature original arrangements – and a saxophone – that catch my ear and make singing a joy.

The message was entitled “Targeting Strongholds” and was the first in the series called Breakthrough Prayer. The church is being led through 21 Days of Prayer beginning today through February 13 designed to encourage daily prayer in battling one specific personal stronghold and one specific Kingdom stronghold.

The pastor urged everyone to text PRAYER21 to 313131 in order to receive a daily text reminder to pray for the next three weeks. This is surely one way to use our ever-present cell phones for an uplifting – and perhaps even life-changing – purpose. I’ll be anxious to see what comes from it.

Our prayer for this church:

Lord, we pray the congregation accepts the challenge to lift their strongholds to You, awaiting the miraculous solutions You will send. Amen.