I usually try and make sure that in the last week of the year as one-year ends and another one starts that I make prayer a priority. I want to hear God’s voice as I reflect on the year just gone by and begin to think about and plan for 2020. I shared some of this with the leadership at Westlake but I also wanted to share it with everyone connected to the church. Maybe these are things that you need to pray about too.

As this year has been drawing to a close, I have felt increasingly aware that I personally need to grow. So I have been asking the Lord to show me the areas where I need to grow and improve as a leader, pastor and disciple.

I have also been praying for Westlake as a church and what the Lord wants us to do and become in 2020.  I have to confess that I was struggling to think about what to pray for and how to pray. Then my mind went to the Lord’s Prayer, perhaps I should have started there. I remembered that the Lord’s Prayer is community prayer before it’s a personal prayer. It’s a prayer for God’s family the church … OUR Father etc

So when you think about it from this perspective the Lord’s prayer gives us Jesus’ prayer priorities for us as his people, for his church. That has to be significant.

As I read these well-known words some of the words jumped out to me with fresh relevance,

Give us

Forgive us

Lead us

Deliver us

What I have been trying to do is to think about those words as questions to help me pray for the church and myself and I wanted to share them with you so you perhaps could do the same. I thought maybe you could use them as way of praying for the year to come too,

GIVE US …. What do we need the Lord to give us as a church, in terms of resources or ideas in 2020? What about you? What do you need from God for what faces you in the next 12 months? Wisdom? Patience? The ability to forgive someone?

FORGIVE US … As we look back over the past year and perhaps the past few years are there things, we need to ask the Lord to forgive us for collectively as a church? Are there things that you know that you messed up in during 2019? Are there words or actions that you need to go to God for forgiveness for so you can leave those situations behind and start the new year off with a clean slate?

LEAD US …. In what areas do we particularly need the Spirit to lead us as a church in the year that is about to start? Where in your life do you particularly need God’s guidance at the moment?

DELIVER US …. What do we need God to deliver us from? Are there are attitudes that we need delivered from? Traditions we need delivered from? The NT talks about the schemes of Satan, so are there ways in which the evil one is attacking us that we need delivered from? I guess all of that applies to us individually as disciples of Christ as well as collectively as the Body of Christ. Is there something that has got its claws into you that you need the Lord to deliver you from because you cant free yourself from its power?

As we head into 2020 why not take some time for reflection and prayer and ask the Lord to

GIVE YOU, FORGIVE YOU, LEAD YOU AND DELIVER YOU in the year to come