Father, please teach us how to pray now, and throughout our lives. Please change us.
We pray for Zimbabwe. Please provide a peaceful and just outcome to the situation, providing safety, forgiveness and reconciliation between those who are divided, and a good and stable government. Lord, we know that Mugabe’s challenge that only you will remove him is child’s play to you. If it is your will, please take up that challenge. In the quiet we pray for Zimbabwe and ask you to show us if you want us to help.
We ask you Lord to provide help for those whose relationships are in trouble. Whether it’s with a husband or wife, parent or child, brother or sister, friend or family member, we pray for conviction about the need for healing. We ask that whenever they feel they have run dry you would provide new supplies of compassion, forgiveness and sacrifice. Please provide courage to try to repair these relationships, and hope that you can do it. Bring about reconciliation in these broken and damaged relationships, and provide the right people to help those in our church who are in this situation. In the quiet please show us which relationships we need to work on, and show us if our friends need help.
We pray for the people in our church and town who are lonely. We ask that those who don’t know you would get to know you and find friendship with you. We ask that you would provide people to be friends with everyone who is lonely. In the quiet we pray for lonely people, and ask that you would open our eyes to those around us who are in need of a friend.
We put in your hands the plans we are discussing for expanding our church buildings. We pray that our ambition to become a house of prayer would be fulfilled, and that through spending time with you we would hear from you about what we should do. Please never let us go the wrong way, but turn us back when we make mistakes. Please use us to bring people to you. In the quiet we ask for guidance for the future of our church.
Lord, we want to ask for your help in the disagreements going on in the Anglican church at the moment. We pray that the church will be united in choosing the right way forward on the issues of women in leadership and homosexuality. We especially pray for ourselves, and everyone involved in the debate, that your name would be glorified through our actions and words. Please show the good news of your love through us, even when we disagree. In the quiet we re-dedicate ourselves to demonstrating your love, and ask for unity among Christians.
Lord, we pray for those who are suffering mutilation, murder and rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We beg you to rescue them. We pray with them, using Psalm 13:
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me for ever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;
my enemy will say, I have overcome him, and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.
In the quiet we urge you to act, and ask you to speak to us about how we can help the people of the Congo.
[Prayed at my church on 2008-07-13.]