Last year as a church we called the month of May RENEW and set it aside for reflection and prayer, asking God to renew us. Each day of the month a prayer guide was sent out and we received hugely positive feedback on how helpful that was.
Well, this year we want to do something similar, in partnership with churches that are in the City-to-City-Europe Network that I am connected to, and in particular through the great vision and hard work of Andras Lovas and is an initiative of CTC Hungary who has put together a prayer guide for 7 weeks.
The Big Idea
After the resurrected Jesus revealed himself to the disciples and gave them their task (you will be my witnesses) and how it would be fulfilled (you will receive power from the Holy Spirit):
“All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers” (Acts 1:14).
Between Easter and Pentecost, if not physically together in one place, we would like to pray with one heart and one spirit for the Spirit of God fall upon our churches and our city.
Each of the 7 weeks has a theme and focus. You are given 5 daily prayers, which can be sent to your inbox or do download the PDF here and each week there is an exercise for you to do.
Prayer for the city and for the Church
So why are we doing this?
- To remind ourselves that the spread of the Gospel does not happen through our power and does not serve to glorify our work.
- To aid us in learning to see the city with Jesus’ eyes and to love the city with His passion and to see His love in our churches.
- To make us aware of the depths of our fallenness because of our sin.
- That our prayers would be a tool for the grace of God to saturate our denominations, churches and city.
The Framework
Here are some guidelines for you:
- Don’t forget that prayer is work, but it is also work that produces fruit. God promises that those who seek Him will find Him.
- Give 30 minutes a day to God for these prayers. Even if after 5 minutes you feel that ‘this is enough already’, keep at it! Keep yourself in front of God for these 30 minutes…even if it is difficult.
- Each time of prayer is connected to a biblical passage. Throughout the week, try to spend more time than just these guided prayer times – go deeper into the word and seek to take hold of it and digest it (Ez. 2:8).
- There are practices which can accompany prayer – situations that help guide us into a prayerful heart so that we have eyes that see the city as Jesus does. Ask the Spirit of God to help you identify helpful practices as you pray each week – things you can do to help you in your prayer time.
- It will prove useful if you journal the important things you learn and experience during this time. Write down what you hear from God and the things He might be calling you to.
- The daily devotions are written in first-person to help put the focus on your own personal participation in this exercise. Try to put yourself into these passages and situations.
Signing Up
If you would like to sign up you can either download the PDF or else we’ll be sending daily emails out at 7:30am on each weekday with the different prayer focuses for the day. Do sign up!
Additionally we have a 24hours of prayer that will be part of the penultimate weekend that we are organising from Friday 29th to Saturday 30th May at Synge Street School, 7-7pm. We will update if we make changes.
Prayer guide by Andras Lovas and is an initiative of CTC Hungary.