Prayer is the preview of God's action.

According to the New Testament, the church is primarily a body of people who profess and give evidence that they have been saved by God's grace alone, for His glory alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

If you are not a member of the church you regularly attend, you may well be going to hell.

Let's say you don't want to stress the urgency of the gospel. Imagine that you are a hyper-Calvinist, and you just figure that people's salvation is a matter for the sovereignty of God. Well, if that's the case, there will never be the heartfelt pleading that you would see in a Spurgeon or an Edwards, or in the Apostle Paul where he pours out his heart in Romans 9 and 10 for the Jewish people.

A church is not a Fortune 500 company. It's not simply another nonprofit organization, nor is it a social club. In fact, a healthy church is unlike any organization that man has ever devised, because man didn't devise it.

Our fears lie to us about how important they are.

There is simply so much reason to believe the good news of Jesus Christ in history, in Scripture, as well as in our own experience that it would take a leap of faith not to believe in the gospel.