FOCUS FOR PRAYER
Philippians 4:4-7 "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests ot God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
Please click the link on the left to go to the appropriate month, and use these as a help and reminder to know what to pray, when you pray on your own, in groups, or at the parish prayer meetings.
There is a danger that these requests can become a shopping list presented to God. That is not how they are meant to be seen. Please use them as a starting point for prayer. However, if you think or feel that you should be praying in a different way about these issues, pray in that way. It is one of the ways that God leads us, and if two or three people find that they are praying in the same way for a certain thing or person, it can be extremely powerful (Matthew 18:19-20). For instance, at a service when someone was praying for a particular person, two people in the congregation independently the same strong conviction, that the person being prayed for was in God's hands (one through an inner sense, and the other through a picture). At that point prayer for the person can become a prayer of thanks to God.
Our prayers are a recognition that we are completely dependent on God, that He is in ultimate control, and that He loves us. Our ultimate desire is that His glory will be seen in this world, among his people, in all that we do and are, and that his Kingdom will come (Luke 11:2). That Kingdom is both in the future, when Christ returns, but also present. We see glimpses of it in the believer's life, in the church and in the world.
There will be times when we see astonishing answers to prayer, when our prayers are answered as we wish or even more abundantly than we wish. There will also be times when it appears that our prayers are not answered as we wish (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). In both cases, we still give thanks. It is a real encouragement when prayers are answered as we wish (as, for instance, when the £500k was provided for us completely out of the blue for the roof repairs), because we are privileged to see the work of God. But we still give thanks to God when our prayers are not answered as we wish, because He does know best, because He will continue to guide us in how we should pray (Romans 8:26) and what we should pray for, and because He will answer our prayers ultimately in ways that are beyond our imagination (Ephesians 3:20). The challenge to us on those occasions is to keep on praying (Luke 18:6-8)