Life · Ministry · Faith
Each morning we at Hope are meeting online via Facebook Live on Hope’s Facebook page to pray together for our day, community, nation, and world. All are welcome to join us.
Daily prayer guides are available for each day and may be downloaded from this page. Return here each morning to follow along as we pray.
Dear Friends,
As we journey through Holy Week at Hope we are meeting online via Facebook Live on Hope’s Facebook page. To pray together for our day, community, nation, and world. All are welcome to join as we:
Additionally, please download the daily prayer guides to participate together in this time of prayer.
Return to this page each day to download and use them in our times of morning and evening prayer.
Dear Friends,
I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:3-6, NIV)
In his workbook, Intercessory Life, Maxie Dunham says there are two overarching principles to our understanding of prayer. First, God is good. Second, communication with God is possible. I would add, not only is communication with God possible, he desires and invites us to pray and commune with him.
As we prepare to enter into the week we call Holy Week in the church. At Hope, we will be gathering together each day of the week to pray together. We will be praying together each morning at 7:00 am CDT and 7:00 pm CDT.
These prayer times will be broadcast live via Facebook live on our church’s page as well as the recordings made available for those who might have missed the prayer times.
Guides to these daily prayer times will be coming out so that we may participate together. You may also, in this time of prayer, submit your own prayer needs. Information on how to do that will be with the guides as well.
Let us come together to pray.
Stephen
Have you noticed we live in a world of outrage? Each one of us is tempted by the pull to say we are right and that the other person is wrong. I can easily let my mind fill with frustration. Particularly when it involves things of the church.
Over the past few weeks, I have been making use of a practice the church has used since the 5th century. Praying a simple prayer of centering and meditation. When I am frustrated, when I do not have the answer, when I feel like my rights are being ignored, when I feel wronged and when I feel stressed I pray this prayer over and over:
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”
It is called “The Jesus Prayer,” and it reminds me that Jesus is my source and my presence in his kingdom is not because of my wisdom or self-righteousness but because of his mercy. And because he has been merciful to me maybe I can be merciful towards others.
Right now, many of us are feeling overwhelmed and without answers. I invite to you pray this prayer with me:
This is the season of ordinations. During the summer months, church groups will gather all across our country and lay their hands upon a new generation of clergy. Tonight, my own religious body will gather to commission ones to the task, and those of us who have kneeled before will remember our own ordinations many years ago. We are men and women called, by God, to a task far greater than ourselves. Long ago another person, A. W. Tozer, was in the place they are at now. Following his ordination, he retired to a secret place wrote this prayer that would become his regular covenant to God. I offer his words as a reminder to all of us and a prayer for those who will be ordained this year.
Stephen
Prayer of a Minor Prophet
By A. W. Tozer
This is the prayer of a man called to be a witness to the nations. This is what he said to his Lord on the day of his ordination. After the elders and ministers had prayed and laid their hands on him he withdrew to meet his Saviour in the secret place and in the silence, farther in than his well-meaning brethren could take him. And he said:
O Lord, I have heard Your voice and was afraid. You have called me to an awesome task in a grave and perilous hour. You are about to shake all nations and the earth and also heaven, that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. O Lord, our Lord, You have stopped to honor me to be Your servant. No one takes this honor upon themselves save the one that is called of God as was Aaron. You have ordained me Your messenger to them that are stubborn of heart and hard of hearing. They have rejected You, the Master, and it is not to be expected that they will receive me, the servant.
My God, I shall not waste time deploring my weakness nor my unfitness for the work. The responsibility is not mine but Yours. You have said, “I knew You—I ordained You—I sanctified You,” and You has also said, “You shall go to all that I shall send You, and whatever I command You, you shall speak.” Who am I to argue with You or to call into question Your sovereign choice? The decision is not mine but Yours. So be it, Lord. Your will, not mine, be done.
Well do I know, You God of the prophets and the apostles, that as long as I honor You You will honor me. Help me, therefore, to take this solemn vow to honor You in all my future life and labors, whether by gain or by loss, by life or by death, and then to keep that vow unbroken while I live.
It is time, O God, for You to work, for the enemy has entered into Your pastures and the sheep are torn and scattered. And false shepherds abound who deny the danger and laugh at the perils which surround Your flock. The sheep are deceived by these hirelings and follow them with touching loyalty while the wolf closes in to kill and destroy. I beseech You, give me sharp eyes to detect the presence of the enemy; give me the understanding to distinguish the false friend from the true. Give me the vision to see and courage to report what I see faithfully. Make my voice so like Yours own that even the sick sheep will recognize it and follow You.
Lord Jesus, I come to You for spiritual preparation. Lay Your hand upon me. Anoint me with the oil of the New Testament prophet. Forbid that I should become a religious scribe and thus lose my prophetic calling. Save me from the curse that lies dark across the face of the modern clergy, the curse of compromise, of imitation, of professionalism. Save me from the error of judging a church by its size, its popularity or the amount of its yearly offering. Help me to remember that I am a prophet; not a promoter, not a religious manager—but a prophet. Let me never become a slave to crowds. Heal my soul of carnal ambitions and deliver me from the itch for publicity. Save me from the bondage to things. Let me not waste my days puttering around the house. Lay Your terror upon me, O God, and drive me to the place of prayer where I may wrestle with principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world. Deliver me from overeating and late sleeping. Teach me self-discipline that I may be a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
I accept hard work and small rewards in this life. I ask for no easy place. I shall try to be blind to the little ways that I could make my life easier. If others seek the smoother path I shall try to take the hard way without judging them too harshly. I shall expect opposition and try to take it quietly when it comes. Or if, as sometimes it falls out to Your servants, I shall have grateful gifts pressed upon me by Your kindly people, stand by me then and save me from the blight that often follows. Teach me to use whatever I receive in such manner that it will not injure my soul nor diminish my spiritual power. And if in Your permissive providence honor should come to me from Your church, let me not forget in that hour that I am unworthy of the least of Your mercies and that if people knew me as intimately as I know myself they would withhold their honors or bestow them upon others more worthy to receive them.
And now, O Lord of heaven and earth, I consecrate my remaining days to You; let them be many or few, as You will. Let me stand before the great or minister to the poor and lowly; that choice is not mine, and I would not influence it if I could. I am Your servant to do Your will, and that will is sweeter to me than position or riches or fame and I choose it above all things on earth or in heaven.
Though I am chosen of You and honored by a high and holy calling, let me never forget that I am but a person of dust and ashes, a person with all the natural faults and passions that plague the race of humanity. I pray You, therefore, my Lord and Redeemer, save me from myself and from all the injuries I may do myself while trying to be a blessing to others. Fill me with Your power by the Holy Spirit, and I will go in Your strength and tell of Your righteousness, even You only. I will spread abroad the message of redeeming love while my normal powers endure.
Then, dear Lord, when I am old and weary and too tired to go on, have a place ready for me above, and make me to be numbered with Your saints in glory everlasting.
Amen.
On this day, 1,211 years ago, St. Aluin of York left entered into eternity. Today I share a prayer of his:
(735 – 804 AD)
In 1952, the United States Congress formally established the first Thursday of May each year as the National Day of Prayer. Over the years, this day has taken on many different layers of meaning as the political, social, and religious climate of our nation has shifted.
Today I have been invited to lead our community in prayer for the church and as I shared in my previous post I will lead the church in a prayer of confession and repentance. To help you in your own prayer today and to guide me in my preparations I will share with you the prayer I will be praying.
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Almighty God, as we gather together this day I pray on behalf of your church. I pray that to you all hearts would be open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord.
Your word says to us that “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 will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
We confess today, as your church, that we have not turned from our wicked ways and we humbly ask, Lord, that you would forgive us our sin.
We have judged the sin and lifestyle choices in the lives of those outside of your church while continuing in our own idolatry and sexual immorality our own sin, within the church.
Lord forgive us our sin.
We have not sought freedom for the prisoner.
We have neglected and ignored the poor among us.
We have not sheltered the orphan and cared for the widow.
We have not welcomed the stranger and immigrant in our midst.
Lord forgive us our sin.
You gave us domain over this earth, but we have exploited your natural resources without regard for the generations that will follow us. And we have used your scripture to justify our negligence.
Lord forgive us our sin.
We have implicitly supported child labor and the slavery of people by demanding lower prices for our goods at the expense of the poor and vulnerable.
We have accumulated more and more stuff. We have built bigger buildings and bigger houses. We have amassed great wealth in our storehouses and barns. (Luke 12:16-21) We have enslaved ourselves to debt and mortgaged the future of our children. And we have done all of this while our brother and sister live with no shelter. Starve with no food. And die from contaminated water.
Lord forgive us our sin.
We have made our citizenship in this land and our nationality central while forgetting we are citizens of the Kingdom of God. We have intermingled and intermarried with the kingdoms around us, even this very kingdom which we reside in today.
Lord forgive us our sin.
Your word says to us that in Christ Jesus we are all children of God through faith, for all of us were baptized into Christ and have clothed ourselves with Christ. Therefore there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, black or white, nor citizen or immigrant, Asian or Hispanic, neither rich or poor, educated or uneducated for we are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26-28) We confess that our churches on Sunday morning do not reflect the unity you describe. We have chosen to be comfortable in that which is familiar rather than risk being changed by the other.
Lord forgive us our sin.
We have complained about our own suffering and trials. We have claimed persecution and exclusion while ignoring our brothers and sisters who die daily because of their faith in you.
Lord forgive us our sin.
We have become known as people of war and not peace.
People of justice and not mercy.
People of judgment and not forgiveness.
People of hate and not love.
People of division and not unity.
Lord forgive our sin.
So, Lord, we pray that you would make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith,
Where there is despair, hope,
Where there is darkness, light,
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that we may not so much
seek to be consoled as to console,
not so much to be understood as to understand,
not so much to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we awake to eternal life.
(Prayer of Saint Francis)
We pray these things in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Amen
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We we the church, those who call themselves the people of God, would turn from our own sin, irregardless of the lifestyle choices and values expressed by those who do not claim any form of a relationship with Jesus, our planet would be transformed. This I believe. And it begins with our confession and repentance.
Pastor Stephen
This Thursday, May 7th, is the 2015 National Day of Prayer. On this day, Christians in my community, and all across our country will gather together for National Day of Prayer events. In years past, I have intentionally avoided participation in these events. The reason being, in previous communities I served, these events were more of a political rally for a very narrow political ideology than they were about praying of our nation. If I want to go to political rally I will, but I have little time for one shamefully veiled as a prayer meeting.
So it was, when I when I came to our community, I kept my distance from this event. That was until a colleague, whom I respect greatly, asked me to participate in last year’s event. I told him that I would not and gave him my reason. He assured me our community’s event was very different from my past experience. Based on his assurance and my respect for him I said I would still not participate but I would attend the event and observe. And this is what I did last year. I was happy to experience an event centered on prayer rather than political ideologies.
Now here I am a year later and a few days away from this year’s event. Once again, I have been asked to participate in our community’s National Day of Prayer service. This time I have accepted and because I am a pastor I have been asked to lead the group in praying for the church.
So I have been pondering what it means to pray for the church on a day like this. Particularly in light of what has happened in our nation and world the past year. What kind of prayer should I be praying?
Only one kind of prayer seems appropriate. A prayer of confession of our sin and repentance. It is the only one I can pray, with any integrity, as one who represents the church. Scripture calls the people of God, the church, to welcome the stranger, to care for the poor, to cross racial and ethnic barriers, to be a place where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).
In Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail (April 16, 1963) Dr. King has much to say about the role of the church in society:
There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
By the church’s example, we can bring and end to the racism and violence in our society. By living the example of scripture, the stranger can find rest in the shelter of the church. By our example the deaf will hear, the lame will walk, the oppressed will be released, the blind will see, the prisoner will go free, and good news will be proclaimed to the poor (Luke 4:18). The poor in money and the poor in spirit. This I truly believe.
That path forward begins with the confession of our sin as a church. So this National Day of Prayer will you join me in a prayer of confession and a commitment, by the power of God’s Spirit, to be a different church?
Blessings,
Pastor Stephen
Dear friends,
What kind of prayers are you praying? Are your prayers filled with the words of the Kingdom or do you pray prayers of maintenance? In his book, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City, Timothy Keller offers these powerful insights:
To kindle every revival, the Holy Spirit initially uses what Jonathan Edwards called “extraordinary prayer” united, persistent, and kingdom centered. Sometimes it begins with a single person or a small group of people praying for God’s glory in the community. What is important is not the number of people praying but the nature of the praying. C. John Miller makes a helpful and perceptive distinction between “maintenance” and “frontline” prayer meetings. 1 Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical, and focused on physical needs inside the church. In contrast, the three basic traits of frontline prayer are these:
1. A request for grace to confess sins and to humble ourselves
2. A compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church and the reaching of the lost
3. A yearning to know God, to see his face, to glimpse his glory
These distinctions are unavoidably powerful. If you pay attention at a prayer meeting, you can tell quite clearly whether these traits are present. In the biblical prayers for revival in Exodus 33; Nehemiah 1; and Acts 4, the three elements of frontline prayer are easy to see. Notice in Acts 4, for example, that after the disciples were threatened by the religious authorities, they asked not for protection for themselves and their families but only for boldness to keep preaching! Some kind of extraordinary prayer beyond the normal services and patterns of prayer is always involved.
So I ask again, what kind of prayers are you praying?
Blessings,
Pastor Stephen
Dear Friends,
Every so often I will receive e-mails and text messages from individuals telling me they are praying for me. On more than one occasion, I have been on the verge of entering a trying situation, and have received a message from a friend just to say they are praying for me as I tackle the circumstance. Once in a while I have even been known to send such a message to a person to encourage them and let them know I am praying for them in what they are facing.
Did you know it is not just fallible persons who are praying for you, but Jesus is also praying for you? Paul tells us in Romans, that even right now, Jesus is at the right hand of God, praying, interceding for you (8:34). What is Jesus praying? He is praying that we might be one just as he and his Father are one, and that we might be brought to complete unity that the world might know about Jesus (John 17:21, 23). Furthermore, because Jesus is continually praying for you, you can have confidence that nothing will ever separate you from the love of Christ, no trouble, hardship, persecution, famine or nakedness (Romans 8:35). In any circumstance we may face know it will not prevent Jesus from praying for you and can never separate from his love.
And so, hear today Jesus say to you, “I am praying for you.”
Blessings,
Pastor Stephen
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