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Alongside churches across the world, we are sharing in a week of prayer, from Tuesday 26th to Saturday 30th May, organised by the Eastern Baptist Association (EBA). Join us in praying ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ by following the resources provided by the EBA, also provided on this page.
You are also invited to join the prayer meeting, hosted by the regional team at the EBA each morning of the week of prayer, at 9am for 30 minutes.
Tuesday
Focus: To pray in our homes, praying for children, families, and those on thir own.
Scriptures
So, here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Thoughts
Our worship and our Christian living should be worked out in our everyday lives, Christianity is not just for within the four walls of a church building, or that 10 to 15 minute devotional time first thing in the morning. For parents these verses are a great model of how to live in worship with God. As you live, as you do family life, as you eat, your everyday, chaotic, busy, food making, clearing up, watching TV life and present it as a family before God as your offering – as your worship to Him.
It is never that easy for parents, but our children will learn faith that sticks their whole life from their tie at home with their family Parents have a key role in bringing God’s message to children so that they can decide to live their lives for Him. Parents are the people who spend most time with children and who have the biggest influence of their children.
Prayer
Pray that:
- God will meet with our children and young people
- Our children and young people will fall in love with Jesus and desire to grow in relationship with Him
- God will inspire and encourage parents as they disciple their children
Taken from Parenting for Faith:
Loving God,
You created parents and children to enjoy a personal relationship with you.
Help parents, godparents, grandparents and guardians
to show the children in their care the reality of life lived with you,
the excitement of God-connectedness,
and the adventure of a lifelong journey of faith in your service.
In the name of Jesus.
Family activiy
As well as completing the activities below, you can follow the family prayer adventure map by Thy Kingdom Come.
Option 1
Print out the EBA Prayer Placemat to help guide your prayers together in your household. When you share a meal together, spend time thinking about and praying for what each of you have written on the placemat.
Option 2
Draw an outline of a house, and ask each member of your family to stamp their fingerprint inside the house (using paint). Give the fingerprints eyes and a smile, and thank God for each member of your family. Display your picture along with the verse from Joshua 24:15: “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.”
Wednesday
Focus: Our immediate community – what can we see? How can we pray for God’s Kingdom to come?
Activity
If you are able to, take a prayer walk near where you live. As you set out:
- What do you see?
- What do you expect to see?
- Notice the weather: is the sun shining, or is it raining? Is the day calm, or windy?
- Are there closed shops? Quiet streets? Isolated people? Sad people? Rushing people? Suspicious people? Relaxed people? No people?
- Who else has walked this path? What burdens may they have carried in their lives?
- What burdens are you carrying that God wants to carry for you?
A short prayer, before you leave
Open my eyes Lord to what you see in my community, give me a fresh way of seeing with your eyes and with your awareness of the needs of the area in which I live.
Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done.
Scriptures
Prayer
Lord we pray for our local businesses, for the shops and leisure centres who serve us. We pray for your blessing on them.
We pray for people who are shut in and cut off. For the elderly and vulnerable, for the anxious and fearful. Lord bring them comfort
Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done
Thank you, God for taking our burdens and now we pray for every house on our street, for every precious life these houses represent, that they too would know God carrying their burdens
Your Kingdom come, Your will be done
Thank you, Creator God for your amazing and bountiful creation.
Thank you that even during times of turmoil you hold this world in your hands, we pray that:
Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, here on earth as in heaven.
Amen
Thursday
Focus: Our frontline workers
Family activiy
Many households have drawn, coloured or painted a rainbow and put it up in windows for everyone to see.
Using the word “rainbow”, try to think of frontline workers that begin with each letter, and write them down in rainbow colours. Thank God for each one, and the job they do. If you know a frontline worker, why not write/draw a letter of thanks and post it to them.
Scriptures
Our work and our productivity is valuable to God: he himself is a productive, creative God. He has given each one of us many gifts and he calls us to make good use of those gifts and abilities. that we might do everything for His glory, however ordinary or mundane that may feel. In our work he comes alongside us and shares our burdens and carries us through even the hardest of times.
Activity
- Who do you know who works on the frontline? Take time to name them in prayer, picture them in their work place.
- What is the name of your nearest school or hospital? Name it before God and pray for those who work there.
- Picture the care home in your village, town district and highlight it to God.
- Have you had your bins emptied this week, post delivered this week, shopping delivered this week? Picture those delivery people and bring them to God.
Prayer
Thank you for the delivery drivers, shelf-stackers, nurses, teachers, funeral directors, electricians, cleaners, doctors, nursery workers, plumbers, fire fighters, social workers, anaesthetists, police officers, carers, IT technicians, factory workers, coast guards, refuse collectors, train drivers, dentists, farmers, charity workers, midwives, postal workers, Border Force officers, check-out staff, surgeons, pharmacists, learning support assistants, gas engineers, drainage workers, prison officers, ministers, taxi drivers, journalists, probation officers, bus drivers, benefits assistants and all the other key workers.
Thank you for the tireless work they do to keep people safe, healthy and fed.
Thank you for their gifts of patience, care, and expertise.
Thank you for these key workers who model a turning of the tables; a different perspective on what it means to be integral to our communities and to the smooth running of society.
When this is all over, let me not forget their significance or take them for granted again.
Amen
By Tim Watson
Friday
Focus: The vulnerable – both those at home, and those who have no home. Those struggling with COVID-19. Those who have lost loved once. Those affected by the pandemic across the world.
Scriptures
The Bible tells us that there will always be poor people among us. That is not intended to be fatalistic, but realistic and a challenge to us to do something about it. The poor are, by definition, usually the most vulnerable and weakest. Ironically during the Covid-19 outbreak many homeless their situation has improved as many of them are in temporary accommodation! But once the lockdown is eased will they be pushed back onto our streets, or will we be able to respond with the generosity that God seeks from us?
Activity
- Who do you know who works on the frontline? Take time to name them in prayer, picture them in their work place.
- What is the name of your nearest school or hospital? Name it before God and pray for those who work there.
- Picture the care home in your village, town district and highlight it to God.
- Have you had your bins emptied this week, post delivered this week, shopping delivered this week? Picture those delivery people and bring them to God.
Prayer
Heavenly Father you do not live in houses, temples or churches but you dwell in the hearts of those who love you, by your Spirit. Jesus was homeless – relying on the generosity of others throughout his life from a borrowed stable to a borrowed grave. Generous God prompt us by your Spirit to be generous those in need – whether in our street, our town or across the world. Help us to recognise that as we bless others, so we bless you.
Heavenly Father, we seek your healing power and gracious touch on those who are suffering from Covid-19. Give them strength to fight the infection. Breathe your breath into them if they are struggling for their own breath. Give them your reassuring presence when they are isolated from those they love. May they experience your peace that makes no sense in the circumstances. And may they recognise you in the faces and hands, actions and words of those who are risking their own health to care for them.
Heavenly Father, who experienced the searing loss of bereavement when Jesus died on the cross, we pray for those who are bereft because of Covid-19. In these times when we are unable even to offer the reassurance of a hug, we fervently pray that they may experience the consolation of your Spirit, the Comforter, within them and around them. May our words and actions convey the depth of our shared sorrow and offer some solace. We pray too for those who serve us in our time of bereavement – for morticians, funeral directors, coroners and ministers – please use them so that those who mourn are blessed by being comforted.
Heavenly Father, when it is easy for us to be focused on the effect of Covid-19 on our own lives, neighbourhoods, towns and country, give us a greater awareness of the way that others around your world are being affected. Thank you for those, like BMS World Mission and their Global Partners, who are seeking to bring relief, comfort, health and hope to people who are perhaps even more at risk from this virus than we are because they lack some of the resources that we have previously taken for granted. We pray too for wisdom and a united approach for world leaders in tackling this outbreak – putting the needs of the most vulnerable around the world before national self-interest.
Amen
Family activiy
Option 1
Find an old plain T-shirt and put it on a bear or cuddly toy. Take a few moments to think of people that would be finding this time difficult, and write them on the T-shirt. Pass the bear around your family members and as you cuddle the bear ask God to be with them.
Option 2
https://vimeo.com/415110978
Look at a map of the world – how many countries can you name? Do you know where they are? Can you find any that are mentioned in the video?
Pray for these people who may not have the same medical care that we do in this country. Pray for the people who choose to go and work within these countries
Learn more about Solidarity Sunday
Saturday
Focus: To pray for God’s Spirit to break our in our churches, communities, nation and across the world.
Scriptures
The Bible tells us that there will always be poor people among us. That is not intended to be fatalistic, but realistic and a challenge to us to do something about it. The poor are, by definition, usually the most vulnerable and weakest. Ironically during the Covid-19 outbreak many homeless their situation has improved as many of them are in temporary accommodation! But once the lockdown is eased will they be pushed back onto our streets, or will we be able to respond with the generosity that God seeks from us?
Prayer
Chaos and Change
When we survey the scene
of chaos before us
we’re hesitant to invoke the presence of God
not too sure what
we might be letting ourselves in for.
Nevertheless we say
Come unsettling God
Come with your chaos
Come with your anger
Come with our passion
Come but be gentle with us.
God who meets us
in the chaos of everyday life
turning the tables on injustice
demanding that we see things
from a different perspective,
We praise you and thank you
that you do not allow us
to stay as we are
but you jolt us out of complacency
you challenge us to change
dare us to dream differently
and every so often
you turn our world upside down.
It’s exiting, it’s scary, it’s painful, it’s risky
but this is the journey of faith
you have called us on.
Give us courage to follow you
upside down God
and give us the assurance
to know
that you have travelled
the path before us
will journey with us
and will follow after us
Christ our strength
Christ our companion
Christ our guide
In Jesus’ name.
By Clare McBeath
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.
Family activiy
Option 1
Read The Lord’s Prayer together. A more modern version of the Lord’s Prayer can be found above.
Option 2
Starting with the words “God is”, how many words can you think to describe Jesus? Write them down, decorate them and stick them up on a wall or your fridge to remind you of who Jesus is.
Activity
You may like to listen to these songs to help you in your praying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMJne6wUoaghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLR_1NFvFv4&list=RDGLR_1NFvFvhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q04XE2-XhyA