PRAYER

21 Days of Prayer and Fasting

January 9-29, 2023

Week One: Our Heart

Day One: Surrender
Luke 9:23-25

For these next 21 days, we are seeking to know God more and be transformed from the inside out to become more like Him. This journey of true discipleship starts with a posture of surrender: we are all-in, yielded to His will, following His way, dying to ourselves so that Jesus can make us fully alive with Him.  

“I’m wholly surrendered; Lord, do what You will in me. 
Just make me Your vessel, this life as an offering.
You can have it all, God.”

Day Two: Inspiration
Luke 17:5-6

God’s will and His way are infinitely beyond our natural human capacity to perceive and comprehend; He is able to do immeasurably more than all that we ask or can even think of! This is why we ask the Holy Spirit to inspire us from His perspective, teaching us how to increase our faith so that we can more fully see and more deeply trust His plans to do unimaginable things!

“Beyond what I want, beyond what I see
Stir up our faith for greater things”

Day Three: Transformation
John 7:37-38

As a church, our mission is to lead people into an authentic, life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ; however, we cannot be faithful ambassadors of God’s restoration for our friends, communities, and our world unless we ourselves are transformed by Him from the inside out. Today, we come to Jesus-the Living Water-and ask Him to fill our hearts so that we overflow as channels of His powerful, life-giving presence!

“The change for my world, begin it in me”

Day Four: Authenticity
John 8:31

To be authentic is to be faithful to what is true, and it comes with a freedom that starts internally and impacts our external way of living. Today we pray for revelation to more fully know Him as the Truth, both through His words and through His example. We ask the Holy Spirit to help us be faithful to His way of living set free!

Day Five: Sacrificial Love
John 15:11-17

To love one another the way that Jesus loves us is a simple command but not an easy one to follow: the way of the cross is the highest definition of sacrificial love. Jesus chose us to follow Him in sacrifice, in friendship, and in fruitfulness, so we ask the Holy Spirit to help us yield the fruits of true love and joy. 

Day Six: Courage
Acts 6:8

The book of Acts tells story after story of natural people who saw healings, miracles, and bold evangelism unfold before their very eyes and through their very hands. We ask God to give us courage to pray these daring prayers, and then fill us with His grace and power to play our part in supernatural testimonies of who He is!

“Humbly we come; boldly we seek
Send us your power; light the flame”

Day Seven: Obedience
Acts 13:22

Throughout this week, we have been asking the Lord to transform our hearts, so that we become more and more like Him from the inside out. Our sincere prayer is to be known as people who have hearts after God’s heart, who worship Him in spirit and in truth by wholeheartedly saying yes and following through with obedience to anything and everything He asks of us. 

Week Two: Our Home

Day Eight: Worship & Creative Team
Acts 16:25-26

Worship is not limited to songs and creative expressions, but Scripture clearly shows how musical worship often consecrates an environment to be an extraordinary “thin space” where heaven meets earth-in an awe-striking foretaste of not only the glory and holiness of God’s presence but also His ultimate sovereignty and victory. Jesus already won the victory over every form of darkness and death, and we pray that our worship and creative teams would be inspired and empowered to lead His church into spiritual battle with songs of trust to endure the deepest night hour, and songs of deliverance that set the stage for God to bring supernatural breakthrough!

Day Nine: Being God’s Witnesses
Acts 22:14-15

Our perspective is limited, but God’s is perfect. In order to be true witnesses for Him, we pray for eyes to see a clearer revelation of our Lord and Savior, a mind to insightfully understand our circumstances in light of who He is, a heart to know and trust His will, ears to hear Him speak, and a strong voice to testify and pass on the messages of good news that He entrusts to us. 

Day Ten: Next Generation
Romans 8:27-30

Today, we pray that the next generation-kids, teens, and young adults-would recognize that their identity is defined by unconditional belonging, meaningful value, and impactful purpose within the family of God. We pray that they would recognize that they carry a significant weight of glory because they bear the image of their heavenly Father, and that they would spend all their passion and ability to worship Him and return all the glory to Him!

Day Eleven: Holiness
Romans 12:1-2

God is holy, standing alone as the only completely perfect One, and we pray that we would be a church that worships the Lord in a manner worthy of His holiness. May we be people who are attentive to the Holy Spirit’s conviction to show us where our lives are conforming to the pattern of an imperfect world, rather than being set apart to faithfully align with God’s holy character, and who respond in true worship by changing the way we think and live. 

Day Twelve: Pastors
1 Corinthians 3:5-11

Today, we pray for each of our pastors and staff who have been entrusted with various roles in building God’s church and cultivating God’s people so that we can be an ever more fruitful field. We pray that they would be sustained with grace to work carefully with servant-hearted faithfulness, while trusting that God alone is the foundation on which they and the church rests, and that His Spirit ultimately is responsible for the growth of His people. 

Day Thirteen: Deacons, Elders, Leaders
1 Corinthians 11:1

Alongside our pastors and staff, a circle of elders, deacons, marriage mentors, small group and serve team leaders, and other lay leaders give their service, encouragement, wisdom, and care to love and guide our church family. We are so grateful for them, and we pray that they would pursue Jesus more passionately and strive to look more like Him each day, so that those who look to their example of discipleship are also transformed into the image of Christ-the ultimate and perfect leader of His church. 

Day Fourteen: Humility
2 Corinthians 4:5-7

Today, we pause to remember that God’s redemptive work in us, in our church, and in our world doesn’t depend on us-and that’s a relief! We pray for humility to see ourselves with the proper perspective: simple, natural, breakable, and powerless containers that just need to be empty and clean, so that we can be filled as channels of His matchless power and lamps that radiate His light. We give Him all the glory today and every day!

“Just make me Your vessel, this life as an offering”

Week Three: Our World

Day Fifteen: Generosity
Galatians 6:7-10

Generosity can take many tangible forms, but sincere generosity always flows naturally from a heart posture of yielding everything we are and have to the Lord in light of His sovereignty, goodness, and eternal perspective. We ask Him to help us see and act from that higher perspective today: to understand that our minor and major decisions about where to allot our time, energy, talents, care, and resources are like seeds. We pray for obedience and wisdom so that we can know how and where to give these things as investments in God’s purpose that will multiply into lasting spiritual fruit, not merely spent on our fleeting pleasures, comforts, and self-centered interests. 

Day Sixteen: Our Heart is Global
Philippians 2:5-11

Jesus gave all His power and His very life so that every person who has ever lived across the whole history of earth would have an opportunity to honor Him and be in right relationship with Him forever. We pray that He would enlarge our hearts with an attitude like His, and expand our capacity to be filled to overflowing with an unconditional and unlimited love that extends to people beyond our family, our community, our church, our city, our culture, and our country-people we most likely will never meet until we all worship Jesus together in heaven. 

Day Seventeen: Unreached People Groups
1 Timothy 2:1-7

Jesus already paid the price to clear every person’s debt of wrongdoing and has made abundant life available to everyone, but unreached people all over the world are still suffering in spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical bondage, oppression, and darkness without hope-not because they have rejected God’s salvation, but simply because they have never heard that Jesus made a way for them to be set free. It is a great injustice that people have not been given an opportunity to know Jesus and walk with Him in freedom, and this is why we intercede on behalf of those who currently have no access to Scriptures and no contact with Christians. We pray that apostles and preachers would come to them quickly as messengers of God’s good news, and that the Holy Spirit would soften and draw the hearts of unreached people so that they are already open and ready to say yes to Jesus when they hear that there is hope in His name!

Day Eighteen: Unity
Hebrews 10:23-25

Unity comes from sharing a common purpose and vision; the people of God are united in alignment with one hope that rests on Jesus’ redemption, one promise that He will restore all things to His original good design, and one Truth that sets the standard for how we should live as the children of one God and Father of all. With this eternal narrative in mind, we pray for inspiration and courage to spur one another on day by day as we strive to complete the good works we have been individually asked to do as participants in God’s mission.

Day Nineteen: Persecuted Church
1 Peter 4:12-14

Although we may not be able to comfort and encourage them in person, today we give our powerful and effective prayers on behalf of our brothers and sisters in God’s family who are mistreated, ostracized, abused and imprisoned because they hold fast to faith in Jesus Christ. We pray that they would sense the presence of the living God coming alongside them to strengthen and defend them, and that they would experience the paradoxical joy of knowing Him all the more deeply because they are suffering for the One who first suffered for them.

Day Twenty: River Valley’s 500 Missionaries
Jude 20-25

River Valley Church has a vision to send 500 missionaries from our local church body to share the gospel on an international mission field for at least one year, if not a lifetime. While only 500 may go overseas, our whole church can help make this mission come to pass by praying for one or more people who are or will be part of the 500. 

Today, we pray that future members of the 500 would have discerning hearts to hear God’s call and dynamic courage to respond in obedience. We pray that our whole church family would surround these pioneers with wisdom, encouragement, practical strategies, innovative ideas, and supernatural provision to spur them on at every stage of their journey as they press on to complete the Great Commission: “to go into all the world and preach the gospel.”

Day Twenty-One: Presence of God
Revelation 7:9-17

We eagerly await and put our hope in the promise that we will be in God’s presence for all eternity, where we will know our God fully, even as we are already fully known by Him. The end of His story is already written and finished–there will be a day when His people will stand before Him in unity, experiencing the perfect and complete revelation of His glorious nature and worshipping Him face to face. For now, we remain faithful and true to Him, though our perspective is limited. We follow as He leads us from glory to glory; we yield as He transforms us to reflect His image more and more clearly.