Persecution of Christians has been intensifying in recent months and weeks, as I am sure we are all well aware. The past century has seen more martyrs for Christ than any century in the history of the church. My precious brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s join hands – virtually, at least – through the internet and pray together in one accord for those who are being persecuted, for the church in our local area, the church around the world, for those who are persecuting the church, and for the lost! There is so much power in prayer as we join our spirits together and lift up these great and pressing needs with one heart, one mind, and one voice as the Body of Christ filled with God’s Spirit!
Almighty Lord, Maker of the heavens and earth,
You alone are God. There is no other. You created everything that exists from nothing. We believe that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). You designed the universe. You set the laws of physics into place. You designed mathematics, biology, relationships, family, marriage, love, language, art, music, color, sound, and all of our senses. You sustain the universe every moment and You cause all of Your creatures to be able to live, move, and breathe.
You are the Giver of good gifts. There is no evil in You at all. All that You create and all that You design is good. Sin has come into this beautiful creation and marred it terribly, Lord. That is why we see such suffering, disease, and death all around us. Those things were not Your original good design. But You are sovereign over evil. You have allowed evil in this world as a results of allowing us to have free will. You use evil for good. You are not tempted by evil. You do not tempt us to sin. You do not cause evil. And yet – nothing can happen without Your permission. What a comfort that is for us! You are able to take things that are in shambles and chaos because of sin – and make something so beautiful for Your glory. You are the God who knows how to create something good from what is formless and void. We fully trust ourselves, our spouses, our children, our churches, our towns, and our countries to You!
WE PRAY FOR THE BODY OF CHRIST (in each of our local churches and around the world)
- We pray for God’s people to see our sin clearly, to be convicted by Your power, to mourn and grieve with deep godly sorrow over our sin and the sins of our communities, states, and nations.
- Call us as one body to conviction, prayer, and repentance, Lord!
- We pray that You might empower Your people to truly repent and completely turn away from every wrongdoing in our lives, hearts, minds, and motives that offends Your holiness.
- We pray for a Holy Spirit-filled core prayer team to begin to pray fervently in each of our churches – starting with ourselves.
- We pray for leaders, pastors, elders, deacons, and teachers who will honor the Bible as God’s Word and the only source of absolute truth.
- We pray for leaders, pastors, elders, deacons, and teachers in each of our churches who are men of passionate, deep, devoted, persistent, faithful prayer – who walk in Your ways and who live lives of integrity, love, honor, obedience, and truth that please You by the power of Your Spirit filling each of them. Use them to lead Your people into a deeper, richer, fuller prayer life and into much stronger faith – according to Your will and by Your Spirit’s power.
- Let us individually and corporately humble ourselves greatly before You and let us exalt You alone! Let us become less and less and let Christ become more and more!
- We pray that our leaders and congregations might become people of fervent prayer who greatly desire and hunger to know and love God and the Bible more and more.
- We pray for great spiritual growth and holiness for our church leaders and for our congregations, for us to be transformed and regenerated by Your power for Your greatest glory.
- We pray for God’s powerful Spirit of unity and agape love in each of our churches and families – that the world might know us by our love and unity.
- We pray for healing for the singles among us, that they might find Your wisdom, Your power, and Your direction. We pray for Your Spirit to radically change the mess that is the current single’s culture among believers that there might godliness, Your sense of order, beauty, goodness, and holiness restored to our singles from teenagers on up through adult singles. We pray that they might know that they are just as important and beautiful in the Body as everyone else.
- We pray for Your Spirit of unity to create one out of the two where there is a schism between singles and marrieds among us. We are all one in Christ! Human marriage will end with this life, but our bond and unity as believers in the Body of Christ will last for eternity! Being single is a good gift from God and being married is a good gift from God. One is not more valuable than the other. Let us lift one another up, love, and encourage each other.
- We pray for much healing, for unity, and understanding between men and women in Your body. We are all on the same team. Help us to love and support one another by Your power for Your glory. Remove the divisions between men and women, give us understanding of one another and let us relate to each other in ways that You desire us to by Your wisdom. Let us work together for Your kingdom by Your power living in each of us.
- We pray for the complete destruction of any racism, favoritism, hatred, cliques, or bigotry in the body of Christ.
- We pray for God’s people to live holy lives by the power of the Holy Spirit regenerating us for His glory.
- We pray that the demonic powers that are holding many hostage and in bondage in our midst, in our churches, on my blogs, and in our communities might have to flee because of the power of Jesus Christ in our midst and because we are fully submitted to Christ as LORD of ALL and then we have the power to resist the devil and he must flee. (James 4, below)
- We pray that You might raise us and other believers up in each of our churches to care for the orphans, the poor, the widows, the sick, those who are being persecuted for Christ, and the oppressed in our communities around the world. Let us love what You love! Use us to be Your hands and feet to this world!
- Lord, we yield all that we have and all that we are to You! We hold back nothing for ourselves! We seek Your face, Your will, Your glory, and Your power in our lives and in the lives of our families, our churches, our neighborhoods, our cities, our work places, and our nations.
- Increase our faith! Give us the biggest faith possible!!!! We long to be people of great faith and we trust You to increase our faith greatly, Lord!
- We pray for more workers for the harvest!
- We pray for our brothers and sisters around the world who are being persecuted – that You might provide for their needs and increase their faith and boldness, let many come to Christ in Syria, in Egypt, in Libya, in the Middle East, in China, in Africa, in North Korea, and everywhere where the church of Christ is being persecuted. Let many of the members of ISIS and those who are persecuting Your people come to know You and bring You great glory!
- We pray for those families who have lost loved ones who have been martyred for Christ – bring them Your presence, comfort, peace, power, love, and provision. Let us as the church around the world rally around them and embrace them, pray for them, to learn about what they are going through, and give to Christian organizations that can help them (Voice of the Martyrs, Open Doors).
- Let us all strive and wrestle together in prayer for the 200+ Christian men, women, and children who have been kidnapped by ISIS in recent weeks – for their deliverance and safety. Let them remain faithful to You, Lord! Use them for Your glory! Show us how we can bless them and their families. Use us to help meet their tangible needs. Use us to love them. We pray for Your miracle to release these precious people and to return them to their families and to safety.
- Prepare all of us to be faithful to You even in the face of inconvenience, discomfort, persecution, abuse, imprisonment, and martyrdom by Your power.
- Raise up prayer groups of believers in every city, town, and village around the world to cry out to You for their cities and their villages for salvation and a Great Awakening!
- We pray for divorce to be stopped among believers and for healthy, vibrant, godly marriages for Your glory! We pray for Your power to heal broken marriages and broken people that our marriages, families, and relationships might display the power of Christ and of the Gospel and that our godly, loving, Spirit-filled relationships might draw many to Jesus!
- We pray for Christian parents to set godly, holy, obedient, Spirit-filled examples of love for God and for each other and their children and obedience to God.
- Give us pastors according to Your heart who will feed us with true godly knowledge and the truth of Your Word even when it is not popular or politically correct.
- Burden our hearts and the hearts of all believers for the backslidden condition of the church, the corruption among our leaders and members, the moral decay of our people and government, and the lost souls of our people. The problems we are facing as people and nations are spiritual problems and Jesus is the only solution! Let us be on our faces – mourning the condition of our churches and our countries. Politicians cannot fix the mess we are in. Money cannot save us. The economy cannot rescue us. Changing health care won’t save us. The military cannot save us. Lord, please change us! Change our churches! Change our countries! Our greatest need is You, God!
WE PRAY FOR YOUR PRECIOUS LOST ONES, LORD!
- We pray specifically for those we know who are lost – by name, and we pray for the lost in our neighborhoods, our villages, our towns, our cities, and our countries. We fully submit ourselves to Christ as Lord and are completely available for You to use us according to Your purposes for Your kingdom.
- We pray for salvation and sanctification of our national, state, and local government leaders.
- We pray for salvation, healing, and sanctification (being transformed to be more and more like Christ) for those who have been abused and sinned against by their parents, spouses, or others.
- We pray for salvation, healing, deliverance, and sanctification for abusers – that they might come to Christ and find new life! We praise You that NO ONE is beyond Your reach, Lord!
- We pray for those around us who are addicted to and enslaved by drugs, alcohol, gambling, idolatry, false religion, lust, porn, the sex industry, greed, materialism, and every imaginable sin to hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and to find salvation, healing, deliverance, truth, and regeneration in Christ!
- We pray for Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, the Sikh, agnostics, atheists, unsaved church goers, pagans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Wiccans, and people from every religious background in every corner of the world to hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and to find salvation, healing, deliverance, truth, and regeneration in Christ!
- We pray for many in ISIS, Boko Haram, the leaders in North Korea, those in the government in China, and all of those who are persecuting believers in Christ to be amazed by the Spirit-filled conduct, attitude, and godly behavior of the Christians they see and interact with and for You to work in many of their hearts to turn them to conviction, repentance, salvation, and regeneration just as You saved Saul and he became Paul, one of the apostles who wrote half of the New Testament and was the apostle to the Gentiles. Do the same kinds of miracles among those who are persecuting believers today, Lord!
- We pray for healing for broken families and people who are hurting deeply, that You might draw them to yourselves so that they might turn and find Christ.
- We pray for a revival and a massive movement of Your Spirit in the church in North America, in South America, in Africa, in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle East, in Asia, in Australia, and in all of the islands around the world.
- We pray for Your kingdom to advance forcefully for Your greatest glory!
- We pray for millions to come to Christ in this generation.
- We pray for conviction and true repentance. We pray for Your Spirit to bring many lost souls to new life in Christ and to continue to accomplish Your perfect will, Lord!
In the Name and power of Christ!
AMEN!
A Call to Confession, Repentance, and the Gospel
A Call to Prayer – for Ourselves
A Call to Prayer – for Our Husbands and Brothers in Christ
JAMES 4:1-11 NIV
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.