“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” John 10:10
Welcome back to our new weekly prayer blog! Please do continue to pray with us throughout the week, and let us know how you are finding this new method of communicating prayer direction and response.
Each week we’ll have a little update from our various projects, friends at OICCU, and the wider world. Maybe work through this as part of your daily prayer, or sit down with friends and spend some time interceding together. Join us at Corpus Christi College 5-6pm on Tuesday for a time of reflective prayer too if you’re around!
We’ve made it through fifth week blues and into the glorious sunshine – hooray! God has been so generous and faithful, and we have so much to celebrate. However, there is always room to challenge ourselves and we should always be making space for reflection and time to think about where we have been and where we are going.
John 10:10 is a verse of comfort and peace. It’s so exciting to hear about God’s desires for us, and to be reminded of His great love for us. Pray for each other that we won’t forget this; may we be free from shame, embraced by love, set free from our burdens, captured by God’s majesty and living in joy and laughter, adventure and fun!
However, as we thought about earlier this term, this verse extends beyond us. Jesus wants us to have life to the full! This message is two fold, and so let’s remember and reflect on that in prayer this week. Firstly, how can we fill the lives of people around us? Providing food and water, shelter and medication, justice and compassion, with love and relationship is so much for fulfilling for everyone involved! Secondly, we know that life in all its fullness comes through relationship with Jesus Christ, so lets pray that we will know Him better so we can better share Him with those around us.
For HO this week, please just give thanks! Thank God for beautiful weather for the barbecue despite the forecasts. Thank him for a smooth operation, minus a brief misplacement of a key. Thank him for so many wonderful volunteers giving up their time to serve in this way, and thank him for the way we’ve been able to serve our homeless friends and give them a warm meal and company.
Please be praying for HTAG as a group now that Stand For Freedom is over; where we go now, how we can best serve God in the fight against trafficking; what we can practically and usefully do as students trying to live out the HTAG vision. It’s so easy to lose momentum when a big event comes to a close so please pray for all the group members that we would continue to be impassioned and enthused to carry on and that God would inspire us with new and fresh ideas. Please pray for the upcoming ‘Bound’ event, a performance designed to raise awareness about human trafficking based on the stories of three victims. Pray that the audience that come to see it will be moved and emboldened by what the performance and leave with a new desire to fight trafficking. Please also pray for the representatives that Just Love have been asked to send to the panel discussion afterwards; that we would have the right words to say and that God would work through us to deliver His message.
Of course, looking back on this week, here’s a few ideas of ways to pray for our troubled world.
- for those affected by the attack in Manchester
- for awareness that there are events like this globally and frequently, and for compassion and aid to be brought
- for the upcoming elections, and that the new government will not leave members of our society forgotten
- for continued conflict, hunger and corruption (perhaps get in touch with other members of JL who know more about each issue to find out how you can be praying!)
with love,
JLOx xxx