Daily Prayers

Over the course of the last year or so I've developed a routine of daily prayers that I pray for the church. Recently I shared them with the leadership team and we thought it would be good for us to take on board these daily prayers ourselves. We've since presented them to the church and asked them to take up the challenge of praying five things everyday. Here are the five prayers in outline form:

• Renewal and restoration
• That God’s Spirit will overflow continuously in me and the church
• The Growing Kingdom 
• That God will draw into his kingdom those who are far from him
• Sharing God’s mission
• That God would lead us in mission
• Sharing the struggle
• That God will give us his peace, as we help each other through our struggles.
• God-Honouring Change
• That God will guide us as we seek to make changes that honour him.

I can't say how many people have taken up the challenge, or what difference it is making. By God's grace we might begin to see the difference over time. What was interesting was both the process of taking my daily prayers beyond my personal prayer life and adjusting them for a wider group. Not everything made sense outside my world and some of the prayers have lost their sense of personal intimacy because they are wider now.

It took me a while to adapt to feeling that they were no longer my prayers but someone else's. Originally I chose to pray these prayers because I felt a sense of call to do it and a sense of discipline about developing a routine of intercession on behalf of the church. I still feel that way. In fact my list of daily prayers has ten items on it, but in truth I can only every remember these five, the other five I have to look up! And maybe five things are enough. Who knows.

February has been a month of prayer for me for a number of years. I try to write a simple prayer guide for the church so that we can all pray about the same things. Each year I look at the previous year and ask myself which items should remain and which should be reworded or replaced by something new. Each year I also wonder what impact last year's month had!

Anyway, if everyone prays at least the five daily prayers for the month, that would be great. Perhaps there will be stories to share along the way. Maybe this year I will try and blog about the prayer month as we go along. We shall see.