…to be delivered tomorrow morning at Blackhawk Ministries in Fort Wayne, Indiana
Father,
This morning we humbly come before you on behalf of Your church, persecuted around the world. This morning we intentionally join with millions of Your children around the world in praying as one body in Christ, individually as members of each other (Rom. 12:5). This morning we join together in praying for the brutalized, victorious bride of Your Son, Jesus. A bride that is making herself ready for the coming of the Bridegroom. As we prepare and adorn ourselves, Father, help us.
This morning we pray for the millions worldwide who faithfully serve and minister under governments that have set themselves against You and Your gospel. This morning we pray that they will continue to be strong in the face of real and violent resistance to Your word. We pray Father, that those serving in the midst of physical violence will remember that this is not our home (Hebrews 11:14). I pray that as they are imprisoned, beaten, tortured, alienated from children, spouses, fellow believers and friends, that they, by their faithfulness to You, will agree with Your apostle Paul, and that they would “not account their lives of any value nor as precious to themselves, if only they may finish their course and the ministry that they received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).
This morning, Father, we continue in praying for Your church, persecuted here in the West. With our brothers & sisters overseas, Father, we pray, not that You would deliver us from persecution, but that You would equip Us by Your Holy Spirit to stand strong in the face of it. We ask You, Father, to save us from ourselves. Save us from the persecution that we have visited upon each other as we have fallen short of our calling as “the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth” ( 1 Timothy 3:15). We cannot pillar and buttress a thing, Father, that we have failed to put in place. We are persecuted internally by materialism, selfishness, and a failure to live as “blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which we have not, like we should, shone like stars in the universe” (Phil. 2:15). Deliver us from evil, Father. Lead us in the everlasting Way. Make us righteous. Give us fidelity with our long-suffering brethren around the world who know and understand, at a terrible personal price, the awful, magnificent & worthy cost of following Jesus. In an uncertain time, Father, give us perspective as to what we might give to Your kingdom’s cause.
Father, this morning we commit, by your grace, to live differently. We commit to, as never before, our ministry of reconciliation in this world. Make us instruments of peace. Make us vessels of Your love. Empower us to set forth Jesus as the One most precious. “Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way” (Isaiah 35:3). May we say with Isaiah, Your prophet, to ourselves & our ill-treated co-laborers:
“Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.” (Isaiah 35:4)
Amen
