Evelyn Underhill once said, “Each Christian’s life of prayer…however deeply hidden and solitary in form, will affect the life of the whole Body.” What you pray today and this week, these collective words and those prayed by the Spirit for you, reverberate within, refresh, and redirect your faith family, and (I’d argue) your neighbors. So, as you pray this prayer adapted from John Ballie, do so expectantly, confident in the God-given truth that “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous person availeth much.” (James 5:16)
Almighty Father, thank you for your love which follows me and ____ (name your GC, family, friends, and neighbors) every day of our lives. Thank you that you fill my and ____ minds with your divine truth and strengthen my and ____ wills with your divine grace. Thank you for every indication of your Spirit leading me and ____, and for the things that seem like chance or coincidence at the time, but later appear to me and ____ as part of your gracious plan for my and ____’s spiritual growth. Help me and ____ to follow where you lead and never quench this light that you have ignited within us, rather let me and ____ grow daily in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus my and ____’s Lord.
Yet as I seek your presence, I bring before you my human brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends, who need your help. Especially today I pray for—
____ (name someone you know, wait for the Spirit to give a name if you need to) who is faced with great temptations;
____ who is faced with tasks too difficult for them;
____ who stands in the consequences of sin
____ who is in debt or poverty (financially or spiritually);
____ who is suffering the consequences of actions which they repented of long ago;
____ who through no fault of their own have had little chance in life;
____ whose family circle has been broken by death;
____ who is a missionary of the kingdom of heaven in a corner of the earth far from here;
____ who is lifting the light of truth in a lonely place;
____ who is struggling mentally and emotionally with the current moment;
and ____ and ____ and ____.
Dear Father of all, make me a human channel through which, as far as I am able, your divine love and pity may reach the hearts and lives of some of those who are nearest to me. Amen.