[Please join me in praying for the Church on Sundays this year.]
Renewing and Protecting God,
Today we pray for your Church – specifically that she would be protected from the evils of this world and from further division within her. Because she is in you, your true Church can’t be understood by this world because darkness can’t understand Light. Protect your Church and your People from evil and from the world’s forces that hate them. Sanctify them by the truth of your Word so that they may have the full measure of joy within them. Where the fires of faith have burned low, send renewal and revival into individual people and into local churches and fill them up with a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit so they are full in Christ. By your Spirit, I pray your Love will abound more and more within them in knowledge, depth of insight, and discernment of what is of You. May your Church and your People be pure and blameless, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, and unified in purpose and mission. To the glory and praise of God we pray, Amen.
“Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:11-18 NIV)
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:9-11 NIV)
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.” (2 Chronicles 7:13-16 NIV)