Monthly Monday Prayer Meeting
The Western Isles Presbytery has set aside Mondays at 8pm as a time of prayer. Our congregation will hold a monthly online prayer meeting to coincide with this. The next of these will be tomorrow, Monday 3rd August at 8pm on Zoom and will continue monthly after that. Please email [email protected] if you would like the link to this meeting.
The Moderator of the Presbytery is currently on annual leave but as we come together for prayer as a Presbytery on Monday evening at 8.00pm, maybe we can focus our thoughts on the following passage and also use some of the prayer points listed.
Bible Passage - 2 Chronicles 7 11-22
Suggested prayer points:
1. Continue to pray that the preaching of the gospel, whether it's heard by physical attendance in church buildings or by online facilities, will lead to transformed lives and an equipping of God's people to serve Him.
2. Pray that the current increase of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the UK and many other countries will be quickly contained and not lead to serious illnesses or deaths.
3. Continue to pray that those who mourn will know God's comfort and that His reassuring presence will encourage those for whom recovery from Covid-19, and other illnesses, is slow and difficult.
4. Pray for countries like Nepal where Rev Suraj Kasula (former ETS student) is ministering in very difficult circumstances and where Covid-19 is now a serious threat in addition to floods, landslides, a plague of locusts and an alarming increase in suicides.
5. Continue to pray for persecuted Christians, many of whom live in areas of the world where Covid-19 has added to the considerable hardship they have to endure.
6. Pray that our leaders in government will realise their own dependence on God and seek His wisdom as they make difficult decisions and weigh up the need to protect lives and healthcare systems, while also trying to protect livelihoods and the economy.
7. Pray that the grim global economic outlook and the likelihood of mass unemployment with all its negative consequences for individuals, families and communities will be prevented.
8. Pray for teachers, parents and children as they prepare for schools reopening on 11th August and as they adjust to a very different and more challenging learning environment to the one they left earlier this year.
9. Pray that the educational resources used to teach our children will be presented from a robust and Biblical moral framework; one which conveys a healthy and dignified approach to relationships, sexual health and parenting.
10. Continue to pray that our children and young people will resist sinful distractions and be used by God to maintain a consistent witness to the gospel in the years to come.
May we learn from 2nd Chronicles 7 to humble ourselves, to pray, to seek God's face and to turn from our wicked ways; and also to understand that in response to our obedience He will hear us, He will forgive our sins and He will heal our land.
2 Chronicles 7:11–22
If My People Pray
[11] Thus Solomon finished the house of the LORD and the king’s house. All that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the LORD and in his own house he successfully accomplished. [12] Then the LORD appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. [13] When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, [14] if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. [15] Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. [16] For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. [17] And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, [18] then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to rule Israel.’
[19] “But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, [20] then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. [21] And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?’ [22] Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them.’” (ESV)
