Prayers of intercession from Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
21 August 2016
Great God of peace and love, we turn to you now
with thanksgiving in our hearts to pray for the world you died to save. In the
cross of your son Jesus Christ, we catch a vision of the end of violence, and
the cessation of suffering.
As we lift
our eyes to the cross in thankful worship, we see all the pain and hurt of
this world present in the broken body of our saviour. So help us to lift our
eyes with courage, to fearlessly face the forces of evil that continually seek
to mar your image in humanity. May we see with your eyes those systems of
oppression that masquerade as truth, and may we learn from you how to see
through the propaganda that would deceive us. So we name before you the
ideologies of division that distort and divide humanity. From racism to sexism,
from socio-economic bias to homophobia, we see people divided one from another,
with families fractured and societies segmented. And we commit ourselves to
living differently, to modelling in our midst the unity that comes through
Christ, where all are equal and loved by you. And as we lift our eyes to the
cross in thankful worship, we ask that you will open our eyes to the
alternative future that you are bringing into being in and through us your
people.
So in thankful worship for all that you have done
through the cross, we lift our hearts,
our hands, and our voices.
Keep us from hardened hearts and compassion fatigue. As we hear the news each day, with
seemingly unending stories of suffering from around the world, it is all too
easy for us to close our hearts to the litany of sadness, and to focus on our
more immediate, more parochial concerns. So open our hearts and drive us to
prayer as we bring before you those close to us and those far away. We pray for
the victims of the wedding massacre in Turkey yesterday, and for all those affected
by terrorist activity over recent months. We pray for those who work for peace,
and for those who have to try to keep the peace. We ask that they will have the
courage and creativity to explore other paths to a future where the spirals of
violence are disrupted, and where all people, on all sides, have their humanity
restored. We pray also for those near and dear to us, and we hold before you
our friends and our families. And we ask for your grace in all our relationships,
that we might live in love with one another.
So with open hearts, we lift up our hands in thankful worship, offering our
best efforts to the service of your coming kingdom. With hands open to welcome
the stranger, and open to give as we have received, we offer our daily labours
before you. From the workplace to the home, may all that we do reflect your
love for all people. From those who we touch to the items we hold, may our
lives become an offering of thankful worship. May we be the hands of Jesus in
this world, and may all that we do be honouring to him.
And so with eyes open to the cross, with hearts
open to the world, and with hands lifted for service, we raise our voices in thankful praise. And as we
name your son Jesus Christ as Lord, we speak and sing into being an alternative
reality where all other claims to power are brought under the lordship of
Christ. As we worship you, and you alone, we unleash upon the earth the
antidote to idolatry, and through the proclamation of your salvation the way is
opened for people to find release from their fears, their guilt, and their sin.
So help us to speak truth to power, to raise up our voices in advocacy for
those who cannot speak for themselves, to speak comfort for those who mourn,
and words of love to those who hear only condemnation.
In thankful praise we raise our voices, we lift up
our hands, we open our hearts, and we lift our eyes to the cross. Receive our
worship, great God of peace and love.
Amen.
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