Prayer is such a vital part of every Christian’s life and in the Lord’s Prayer we are taught to pray for God’s kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Matt 6:10)
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have launched an initiative called ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ within the Church of England, urging Christians to pray, especially during the week 8-15 May 2016 as we prepare to celebrate Pentecost next Sunday. In their letter, sent to every parish priest in the UK, they say:
“At the heart of our prayers will be words that Jesus himself taught us – ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.’ It is impossible to overstate the life-transforming power of the Lord’s Prayer. It is a prayer that is reassuring enough to be on the lips of the dying and yet dangerous enough to be banned in cinemas. It is famous enough to be spoken each day by billions in hundreds of languages and yet intimate enough to draw us ever closer into friendship with Jesus Christ. It is simple enough to be memorised by small children and yet profound enough to sustain a whole lifetime of prayer. When we pray it with sincerity and with joy, there is no imagining the new ways in which God can use us to his glory.”
In our church, we are praying for 2016 to be a ‘yield year’, so this venture, asking us to pray for every Christian to receive new confidence and joy in sharing our life-transforming faith, is very much in line with how we feel God is asking us as a church to pray. Let’s be willing to look at new ways to pray, to seek out opportunities to pray (individually and corporately), to pray for friends and family, to pray for our community and to believe that God is willing to hear and answer our prayers! A variety of resources are available here, but ultimately, all we need is the determination to set aside the time to pray and the willingness to actually pray!