Dear God in Heaven
I thank you for all the good you have given to my community. I thank you for my church family, and for my resources, and for your presence everywhere I go. I thank you for giving me faith to know you are there, even when I don’t always see you. I thank you for your goodness, and for your mercy, and for your sacrifice — none of which I deserve. I thank you for the example you’ve given me in the form of Jesus Christ. I thank you for life.
I pray that you will help me to be disciplined in my walk and work, and that you will impassion those in my community and my church to use the viral situation around us to hone spiritual disciplines. Give each person in my church someone to disciple, and give each of them a person by whom they can be discipled. Implant in their minds, and shape in their spirits, names for which they can pursue to fulfill that goal. May your word touch their hearts and minds to enlarge and to perfect their service for you, and may your Spirit embolden their spirits and forge them into disciplined, and effective warriors for the battles that rage around them. Enlighten their awareness of such battles. Make their warriorhood mighty and dangerous to the enemy because of your greatness in them. Make them light to the lost, and strength to the discouraged. Give them purpose and direction. Give me and my fellow workers guidance to shepherd them with clarity.
Strengthen the faith of those who struggle. Push back the fears, the worries, and the anxieties that plague those who depend upon the healthiest of economies in order to just survive. Bring comfort and peace. Ease their minds as they discipline themselves to rest in you. Urge them to meet you in the morning. Prompt them to embrace your peace as they lay down their heads at night. Assure them that you provide. Encourage them that you are all-powerful, and that nothing happens without your knowledge and consent. Remind them that nothing happens without you intending or shaping it for their good.
Finally, be glorified in our communities. Fill the mouths and lungs of your people with praise. See them honor you willingly with disciplined love and commitment to your ways and plans. Make their affection for you contagious, and spread it to everything and everyone they touch.
I ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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