Intercessory Prayers
The following prayers have been written by various authors (as noted) to Stand in the Gap for our families, community, and nations. These prayer are examples of what a prayer for intercession looks like. Pray through these and let your heart come to understand the facets of intercession. Pray through these to Stand in the Gap for your community. We will add to these from time to time.
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Some people are scared to pray because they feel they may say something wrong. Do not be afraid. Fear comes from the powers of darkness. "For God has not given us a spirit of fear but one of power, love, and sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7. The Holy Spirit will assist you and fill in the places that you miss as you learn and mature in Him. Romans 8:26-27, "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how we should pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with inexpessible groanings. And He who searches our hearts know the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes on behalf of the saints to God's will."
Lord,
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I come before you on behalf of myself, my family, and my community. I am a person of pride, and I have not come before you as soon as I should have. Forgive me for my pride, my selfishness, my idolatry.
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Forgive us for not making you first. I stand before you and pray for myself, my family, and my neighbors; we have as a community put other things before you. I am sorry for the sadness and pain that we bring you when we make idols of other things in our lives. You have said to have no other gods before you, but we choose sports, and work, and leisure activities ahead of you. We elevate our personal desires and put you last on our list. Lord forgive us.
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Father, you have blessed us with life and yet we take life for granted until something like this pandemic comes before us. We think that eternity can be dealt with later, we always have tomorrow. When we think of preparing we get life insurance, we write a will, we set our homes in order, but we failed to ensure that we have peace with you. We make plans to meet our friends for dinner or go with family to the lake, but we have failed to ensure or make plans to meet our family and friends in heaven. Father forgive us for leaving all these people until the last moment, for making our fleeting lives more important than the eternal destination of our loved ones.
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Lord, you have been reaching out to us all these years. Providing opportunity through your Holy Spirit to come to you and know you more. However, we as a people have failed to prepare for this time. We do not know what to do to get ready for the potential outcomes before us. Father forgive us for leaving you until the fragility of life is right before us. Lord, show us where to find you. Provide us with the words to speak, and the opportunity to bring our neighbors and our loved ones to a saving knowledge of you, and allow us to assist in bringing them to belief.
Lord, thank-you for the blessings you have given us. The loved ones, the shelter from storms, all the benefits of living in this country. Lord, but more than all this, thank-you for your love and your desire to have a relationship with us, with me. Thank-you for sending your Holy Spirit to live within your people and both guide and comfort us. We thank-you for the comfort and support you bring to us in times of need. Help us to know you more, we wish to know you intimately. Reveal to us your character, your glory, and your everlasting mercy. Help me to reflect your glory and your brightness into the community in this time of darkness.
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Lord our country has gotten off the track and we have strayed away from you. We have sinned before you. Lord we deserve all that you should bring upon us. We as a people have been evil and wicked and have committed unspeakable abominations before you. Lord send your Holy Spirit into the midst of the people and prompt them to turn, open their eyes Lord and let us see the error of our ways so that we may turn from them.
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We pray for our leaders that they may experience Your presence and may they be guided by you. Lord, may the people of this country seek leaders who honor you and hold your precepts up. Let this country be known as a haven in the time of storms because we have begun to follow you.
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Our great God, we ask for you to hold off on your judgment and give the people some more time to come to you. Lord, I have failed to speak your truths in the marketplace and the people have not heard of you enough. I am the one who should know the truth of you and how yours ways are best, but I have allowed my neighbors to walk away from your ways. I have allowed my family to trust in themselves rather than in you. Lord, forgive me, I desire to walk in your ways and to lift up your vision before this community.
Lord, let this moment be the start of a great awakening in this community. May this viral pandemic be the impetuous to a renewed desire to follow you. May we as a people realize that you hold the answers to life and to death and that true life begins with a relationship with you and continues into eternity with you. May we see how we are separated from you and that only through what your Son did can we come back to you. Lord, touch us, save us, spare us, fill us.
In the name of your Holy and Resurrected Son,
Amen - Prayer Pandemic 2020
Dear Lord:
In these days of great uncertainty , we give you glory and praise for who you are, We give you glory and praise for what you do, and we declare you Lord of all, Lord of all circumstances and Lord of all situations. We come before you in the name of your Son, Jesus.
We ask that you will guide us when we don’t know where we are going, that You will hold us up when we have no safe place to put our feet, that You will carry us when legs are feeble and hearts faint and that you will beckon us to step forward in faith as we emerge from this present darkness to walk carefully in the steps that You have taken before us.
We come before you plead mercy and grace for the frailties we display. We come before you on behalf of those who don’t know where to turn and settle for less than what you have provided for us. We come before you asking that you will give us the courage and wisdom to march when you say march, patience and wisdom to sit when you say sit, and we come before you asking that you will make us a conduit of Your love for all.
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“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” - 2 Chronicles 7 verse 14.
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Amen. Dr. Ian Fitzpatrick, National Director Church of the Nazarene Canada
I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.
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I pray that He would grant us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit to our inner man, and that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith;that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.
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Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.
Amen. Prayer adapted from Ephesians 3:14-21 L Allison, Wapella SK