Praying Together With Friends Around The World

 It’s Sunday and we get to pray with our local church families and with friends around the world.  We may only be able to do so online or with very limited outdoor gathers or maybe You are living in a part of the world where You can gather with a number of other folks to pray and worship.  In whatever circumstances we find ourselves today, let’s give thanks to God.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.  Hebrews 4:16

God, our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sustainer, and our friend, we come today to You through Jesus Christ whose death and resurrection has won us a place where we can stand in Your holy presence.  Once again today we want to thank You for bringing us out of darkness into your wonderful light.  That includes just knowing You, knowing You are there, knowing that we matter to You, knowing that You are with us through everything we face.

Your word reminds us today: 

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  1 Peter 2:9

But we know Lord that You’ve done all this in us for more than just us.  You have so many that You want to experience the same forgiveness and deliverance from darkness.  We remember what You told Paul in the Bible:

I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’  Acts 26:16-18

Nothing solid that we have today has come to us outside of the Lord Jesus and we set our hope in Him today.  Please open the eyes of our hearts that we may know you, and give effective witness to Your goodness to those who don’t yet know You. 

Once again today we ask You to widen our thoughts and our focus from just what’s going on with the pandemic and its effects on our daily living.  Who are You sending to us today to lift up, to encourage, to speak of Your love and comfort, to let them know that You are ready to forgive them and enter into a life-giving relationship with them?  Open up closed doors for us today, Lord, we pray.  Give us favour in the hearing of those with whom we speak.  Let this be a day where someone we know comes to faith in Jesus Christ because we were there to remind them of Your saving love.

We acknowledge that there are still many challenges and sorrows and burdens that people carry and so in the middle of all that we give thanks that You promise to be our help and our provider.

Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.  Psalm 124:8

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  Romans 8:26

Even as we pray we know we need You to help us.  We don’t know how to pray as we ought – what to ask for, who to focus our prayers on, but we simply ask now that Your Holy Spirit would work in us with thoughts, with longings, even with words, so we bring our loved ones and friends to You in a way that You can reach out and bless them.  You are ready and waiting for us to simply ask You.  Help us now to do that.  You know who’s ready to receive, who’s sensitive to what You want to do right now.  Help us to support them and pray for them right now.

O Lord, you alone are able to do all these things and things far better than these for us. We thank You and praise You and pray all this in Jesus’ name.  Amen