With Valentines’ Day just around the corner, there is thought being given to special ways that we will express love for those closest to us. Cards and flowers and chocolates will be purchased to give as gifts, celebrating the love that we have for family and friends. At our house, I am planning to make a chocolate brownie trifle for us to enjoy together over Valentines. There will be phone calls and messages posted on various forms of social media. Hopefully, we tell people that we love and care for them often, not just at Valentines’ Day. Something extremely loving that we can do for those we love is to pray for them. This gift of prayer is a gift that our loving God has given us so that we can communicate freely with Him. We can implement prayer as a way of asking God to take care of those we love and to bless them and guide them every day. I like to pray that God will surround people with awareness of His love for them. The security that comes from knowing that we are loved by God and by each other is a very precious gift. In Philippians 1:9 we read, “And this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.” In our world that currently seems largely dysfunctional and in desperate need of a love that abounds in knowledge and depth of insight, this is what we can lovingly pray for each other. Please plan to join in our weekly WEDNESDAY PRAYER TOGETHER tomorrow February 9th at 1 pm.
Praying and thanking God that we can regularly pray for each other as an act of love, Pastor Lola
Our loving God when we pause to consider Your love for us and for our world, we are reminded that Your love for us compels us to love each other. Thank You God that one of the most loving things that we can do is to pray for each other. When we pray, we are sincerely seeking Your best for those for whom we pray. It saddens our hearts to witness those who are not seeking Your best for others. It grieves us to recognize that in some places and relationships where love is so needed, at times, it is absent. We do not pretend to know what to say in response to behaviour that is consistently not affirming love and compassion. Show us our God what You want us to say and do. We do not want to make already tense and frustrated circumstances worse. We implore the power of your love God to bring healing and a desire to live and work together in cooperative ways. Where wrong motives and actions need to be confronted, please show us how to do that in ways consistent with You and Your persistent love. Our God this whole thought of praying for our love to abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight gives us hope. You God are able to propel us away from a spiral of self deception and to reveal truth and understanding that only You can provide. We are praying for determination to engage in the hard work of building each other up instead of tearing each other down. We pray that our faith in You will result in us listening attentively for the direction of Your Holy Spirit. Please guard us against time wasted on anything that does not serve to advance Your love and Your redemptive work in us and through us. All around us we witness evidence of COVID fatigue. We pray that none of us will use this reality as an excuse to not treat each other with love and respect. Our continued prayer is that Your love will motivate us to discover ways that flickers of faith can be fanned into flames that will burn brightly and bring renewed awareness of the potential that you have given us to be instruments of Your loving grace. Speak to us LORD in Your quiet whispers. Speak to us LORD in the intense volume of Your love clearly demonstrated in Your Son Jesus giving Himself as the greatest expression of love ever known. Thank You God that You make it possible for us to find definition for love in the love You birth in each of us. We pray for Your love to grow ever stronger in us as we commit to keep on praying for and lifting each other up in prayer. In the Name of our loving Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. AMEN.