prayer 365
prayer 365 1st February 2019 31st January 2020 Weeks 1 13 Encountering God In line with this year s twin focus on the Empowering Presence and Serving as Ministers, we will be praying together collectively as a church. Prayer 365 allows us to focus on changing our hearts, spirits and minds, as we prepare ourselves to embrace spiritual transformations both personally and collectively as a church. For more information, contact Joshua Lim.
WEEK 1 This week we focus on consecrating ourselves. Like the disciples in the upper room, we are called to wait for the gift from the Father. Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them, "Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. (Acts 1:4) Pray for the openness to the fresh move of the Holy Spirit in your life. Recognise your brokenness and weakness and your dependence on God to live a victorious Christian life. Bring to the Lord your sins and struggles and ask Him to do a new work in your life.
Confess before the Lord areas of your life where you look to people rather than to God. Confess before the Lord those times when you put your confidence in your own strength rather than the strength of God. Repent and ask God to remove all wrong motives, resentments and hurtful emotions that are inhibiting you from experiencing the Holy Spirit. Ask God to give you a fresh understanding and experience of the Holy Spirit. WEEK 2 This week we focus on the heart. The Bible says that our hearts are deceitful and can sometimes be filled with wrong motives and wrong attitudes. We cannot experience the fullness of His Spirit unless we allow Him to work on our heart s posture. The heart is deceitful above all thing and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
Ask God for a fresh revelation of who He is - His nature, His glory, His Power and His Kingdom. Pray that God may increase while you decrease in your life. Pray that you do not grief the Holy Spirit whom God has sent to live in us. Pray that God removes the barriers of our lives that limit the workings of the Holy Spirit. Ask the Lord to forgive you if you had doubted His powerful move in your life and the life of the church in the past. Pray for boldness and allow the Holy Spirit to use you to declare His glory through your life and your interactions with the world. WEEK 3 This week we focus on having the right revelation of who the Holy Spirit is. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing in the place of honor at God's right hand. (Acts 7:55)
Come before the Lord and confess those times when you doubt His power, His Sovereignty in your situation when things seem to work against you. Ask God for the change of perspective on tribulations and turn them into divine opportunity to bear witness for Christ. WEEK 4 This week we focus on trials and sufferings as we follow Christ. There is a cost in following Christ, and in our tribulations the Holy Spirit can still use those experiences to bear witness to the unbelieving world. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7)
WEEK 5 This week we focus on looking beyond the natural eyes and situations. God is still Lord even when we do not understand. Serving God can sometimes seems so pointless, but it is often those seemingly pointless times that God uses to touch many others. In your personal walk with God have you at times felt that God has abandoned you or that God has not kept his promise? Ask God for the grace to see that everything that happens has a ultimate good and purpose which He intends to bring into the dying world. All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us. (Hebrews 11:39-40)
Read and meditate Acts 10:1-11:18 on the story of Cornelius. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you the Lord s promise of the Holy Spirit. Confess before the Lord those times when you have tried doing it all on your own strength. Pray for the fresh infilling of the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit. WEEK 6 This week we focus on the gift of the Holy Spirit which is for every believer, and not just the Apostles or a select group of people. God does not just want us to enjoy His salvation, but He wants us to live that salvation out powerfully through the infilling of the Holy Spirit. God knows we can t live a Christian life by our own strength and mere will-power. We need the continuous infilling and indwelling presence and power of the Spirit to be Christ s witnesses in a world that is increasingly hostile towards Him. Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, 'Rivers of living water will flow from his heart. (John 7:38)
Pray for the Prime Minister of Australia. Confess the sins of the nation and asked God to heal our nation. Pray for the coming election that the Holy Sprit may convict people and their consciences of what is wrong, and pray for a return to the fear of God and His precepts. WEEK 7 Pray for our government. For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)
Pray for God s mighty move in schools, universities and places of learning. Pray against the principalities over Australia s educational system that generally breeds atheistic tendencies and a lack in biblical values. Pray for God-honouring policies to be reintroduced to the educational system in Australia. WEEK 8 Pray for Australia s educational system For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)
Pray that Christ will continue to be the centre of your family, marriage and in your parenting. Pray against agents that seek to oppose the biblical family institution. Pray for protection for all the families in LifeGate. Pray that we will have a strong and loving family based on the teachings and the love of Christ. WEEK 9 Pray for the family institution. For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)
Pray that God will give you more opportunities to share the love of Christ and be an influencer in your school, your workplace and in your home. WEEK 10 Pray for the marketplace. Pray that we Christians will be a strong testimony and an influence in the marketplace. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)
Pray for the renewal in the Universal Church. Pray for the Universal Church to return to her first love. Pray for LifeGate to be faithful to the Great Commission. Pray for LifeGate to demonstrate the love of Christ towards each other so the world may know that we are followers of Christ. Pray for LifeGate to be faithful and true to God s Word and not to compromise on it. Pray for LifeGate to live in holiness and purity for God s glory. WEEK 11 Pray for the Universal Church. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. (Matthew 16:18)
Uphold in prayer persecuted Christians around the world especially those within the 10/40 window. Pray for grace and special strength for those who are currently imprisoned and tortured, and for the same for their family members. Pray for supernatural intervention, deliverance and protection for those who are suffering for the sake of Christ. Pray for divine revelation to the unreached peoples that they will see the truth and be set free. WEEK 12 Pray for the persecuted Christians around the world. If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. (John 15:8)
Pray for the release of labourers and workers to the fields. WEEK 13 Pray for God to send labourers to the fields. Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest. (Matthew 9:37-38) Pray that LifeGate will be able to send workers and provide support to workers in the harvest fields. Pray for the people of God to release resources to the harvest fields.
Additional Notes
Additional Notes