Prayer is a privilege for Christians. We are given access to God though Christ and the Spirit (Ephesians 2:18). And we are encouraged to approach the throne of grace with confidence to draw near to God and pray to Him (Hebrews 10:19). Thus, our prayer is the expression of our proper relationship with God and our dependence on him. In Revelation, the worship accompanied by the prayers of the saints, which rises to God and pleases Him (Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-4). This is why we pray in church services.
We have put together a prayer guide that covers our world, our church focus/aim (purpose, vision, mission and strategy), our growing congregations, our diverse staff team, our mission partners locally and globally, our local churches in the Ryde mission area, and our many ministries.
This rotating schedule provides a guideline for matters you can include in your prayers, but rest assured, we don’t expect you to include every single topic each week!
We suggest you choose 3 or 4 points from the schedule to include in your prayers. Our aim with this schedule is to ensure that over the year, we will be able to cover the main focus areas that we (as a staff team) think are important to include in our prayer ministry during Sunday services.
But please also note that this schedule is not the limit either!
How to use the prayer guide:
(a) Click on the Prayer Guide - and it will automatically display the 'Current Prayers' and the 'Next Sunday'. If you are preparing prayers for the coming Sunday services, you should click on the tab showing the 'Next Sunday'.
(b) You will notice a colour-coded prayer list covering the following topics - note that there are links for more information and also sample Prayerbook Prayers:
- Thanksgiving - always start with being leading the church being thankful to God
- The World and Society
- International Issues
- Australian Issues
- Church
- For our church
- For our ministry teams
- For our ministries
- For our sick and needy
- Missions
- For our Core Mission Partners
- For other missions
- For Ryde Mission Area churches
(c) Remember, you don’t need to include all the topics! Just choose a few you feel led to pray for on Sunday.