To kick off the new year, we are inviting everyone at Sound City to a month of dedicated, collective prayer. Each week, we will have a different area of focus as disciples: 1) relationship with God, 2) relationship with self, 3) relationship with the church community, and 4) relationship with the unbelieving world around us. Please set aside time each day to pray along the lines of the guidance provided below. The focus of this week’s prayer is our relationship with our community of faith.
Thank you God that I can be fully known by you, and in that humbling and vulnerable truth, let me experience the depth of your love. God as you pursue me with your committed, covenant love, help me to respond in ever increasing love and devotion toward you and those in my community. Help me to look at your bride, the church and love her because you love her. Make me glad when I see the ways you are shaping and refining us, the church, like a dazzling bride dressed in white. Cause us to constantly point one another back to you as we journey through this life together.
Day 15 (Jan 16) focus: a loving community
Today’s prayer focus is that we would be able to show love within our church community. Jesus has demonstrated his love for us and made us one body in him. He’s put us together to encourage one another, bear one another’s burdens and joyfully participate in discipling one another in Christ. Spend some time in silent prayer asking God to fill you with his love so that you can pour out that love to those in your community.
Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another. Do not lack diligence in zeal; be fervent in the Spirit; serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer. Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. – Romans 12:10-16a
Pray that God would give you a heart of love and generosity toward everyone in your church community.
Pray for eyes to see God’s grace at work in our church and in the individuals in your community.
Pray for Spirit led unity with your brothers and sisters in Christ so that you can, “rejoice with those who rejoice,” and, “weep with those who weep.”
Day 16 (Jan 17) focus: a serving community
Today’s prayer focus is to be servant-hearted within our community. We serve from a place of gratitude and joyful response to the way God has served us through the work of Jesus. Jesus gave up the glory of heaven to become a servant for us. Jesus washed his disciples' feet and then called them to do the same for one another. Let’s seek God for the continued grace to serve one another as his disciples.
…whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. –Matthew 20:26b-28
Pray that the way Jesus has served you would create in you a joyful desire to serve others.
Pray that God would receive your service as an act of worship to him.
Ask the Holy Spirit to keep you from finding your identity in your service or anything else besides Jesus' work on the cross.
Day 17 (Jan 18) focus: thriving marriages
Today’s prayer focus is for the marriages of Sound City Bible Church. God created marriage to be a picture of Jesus’ relationship to the church. In marriage we see servant care and commitment to another. In marriage we can experience what it means to know another broken person on the deepest level and love them still, because Jesus knew everything about us and loved us enough to go to the cross. Today we want to pray for the renewing and strengthening of the marriages in our church so that the picture of the gospel that is painted through marriage would be on display in our midst.
For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, since we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband. — Ephesians 5:29-33
Thank God for a savior that knows you all the way to the bottom and loves you, redeems you, and pursues you.
If you are married, pray with your spouse that you would know the presence and love of God in greater measure. Pray that you would love each other with Christ’s patient, self-giving love.
If you are not married, pray for the married couples God has placed in your life to have healthy, thriving marriages that display the gospel. If you desire to be married, ask God to give you patience and an obedient heart while you wait for his perfect timing.
Pray that Jesus would return to claim his bride, the church.
Day 18 (Jan 19) focus: children to know and love Jesus
Today’s prayer focus is that the children of our church community would know and love Jesus. Charles Spurgeon once said, “Train up a child in the way he should go - but be sure you go that way yourself.” We want to be a people who show the children in our midst an example of faith, repentance, humility and godliness. Spend some time in silent prayer asking God to fill you with childlike faith and humility even now.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. — Ephesians 6:1-4
Pray for the salvation of young children in our church community and that they would persevere in the faith.
Ask the Holy Spirit for eyes to see the children in our midst as younger brothers and sisters. Ask for the grace to build them up in the faith.
Pray that God would raise up leaders from the next generation to continue his kingdom work in this region and beyond.
Day 19 (Jan 20) focus: a generous community
Today’s prayer focus is that we would be a generous church community. As a church, we have been able to do much in the name of generosity over the years. By God’s grace we will continue to be a church marked by generosity. Spend some time praying or journaling about the ways God has been generous to you and then about ways he may be calling you to be generous.
Instruct them to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share, storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of what is truly life. — 1 Timothy 6:18-19
Thank God for his generous provision toward you.
Ask the Holy Spirit for help in being wise with your finances and your time.
Pray that your generosity would not come from a motive of looking good or feeling good, but that your only goal would be to see God’s kingdom expanded and people served as unto the Lord.
Day 20 (Jan 21) focus: a truth-telling community
Today’s prayer focus is that we would be people who speak the truth. Fear of man can cause us to shrink back from speaking words of truth, but our brothers and sisters in Christ need us to speak into their lives sometimes, and we need that from others as well.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness, for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. — John 1:14-17
But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ. — Ephesians 4:15
Ask God to give you wisdom and gentleness to speak encouragement when the people close to you need to be built up, rebuke when they are in error, and godly counsel when they need your advice.
Pray that God would give you ears to hear and grace to receive from the people he has placed in your life.
Pray that the Holy Spirit would help you to feed others with the spiritual food of his word.
Day 21 (Jan 22) focus: a sober-minded community
Today’s prayer focus is that God would shape us into sober-minded people. In this world of constant noise, it can be hard to keep a clear head. God calls us to think clearly by his Spirit and according to his word, not according to the world’s ideas or what you hear on the news or social media. Spend some time praising God that all wisdom and truth is his and that he wants to share it with you.
Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise— making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. –Ephesians 5:15-17
Pray that God would reveal to you the ways you are being more informed by culture, peer groups, or political parties than by his word.
Pray that God would give you increased freedom from anxious thoughts that keep you from clear-headed thinking.
Pray that sober-mindedness would give way to a sense of purpose in your day to day living so that you can offer truth and the gift of non-anxious presence to those around you.