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A Prayer for the New Year

Valerie Penney /Wednesday, January 3, 2024

 

Listen to "A Prayer for the New Year"

A Prayer for the New Year

 

Read "A Prayer for the New Year"

As we begin the new year, let’s pray...

Father, at the outset of 2024, we come as a Simply Mobilizing community. We come to worship You, the Mighty Creator God, who has made a way for peace and joy and forgiveness through relationship with Jesus. I marvel at how you walked into my family and life when I was 13, and how you walk with us today, broken and frail as we are. We adore you and take this moment to personally express that.

 May you, God, be gracious to us and bless us
    and make your face shine on us—
so that your ways may be known on earth,
    your salvation among all nations. (Psalm 67:1-2)

Remind us that the end goal of our lives on mission with you is to see your ways known throughout the earth. Show me the areas of my life not yet fully surrendered to your purposes. Walk through the garden of my heart to prune the dead branches.

May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
    for you rule the peoples with equity
    and guide the nations of the earth. (Psalm 67:4)

Lord, so many unreached people groups still need a gospel witness, a self-reproducing church in their own culture that can extend the good news of Jesus in heart languages and native cultural contexts. Use us in novel ways in 2024 to reach the unreached and see the unsaved saved, both in our own neighbourhoods, offices, classrooms and in the farthest reaches of our world. Let us not be content to stay with our Jerusalem when so many have not yet heard. Burn your passion for the lost on our souls, Father.

The land yields its harvest;
    God, our God, blesses us. (Psalm 67:6)

May we humbly also ask for your favour on our land, our communities, and families, and for those among us who need spiritual refreshing, emotional care and physical healing. As you answer, may the ‘ends of the earth’ also learn to fear you, whom to know is life eternal.

Take the blank canvas of this new year ahead and write your amazing journey as we join you on mission. We open our hands to show those things we have to offer, and those things we try to hold back, and humbly surrender both to you.

May God bless us still,
    so that all the ends of the earth will fear him. (Psalm 67:7)

We pray in the name of the one born in Bethlehem, son of God, son of David, Jesus.

Amen.

This prayer was submitted by Valerie Penney. Valerie serves on the Simply Mobilizing National Coordination Team as the Atlantic Region Coordinator, and works for Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada International Missions, equipping leaders globally. She and her husband Fred found themselves living in Newfoundland in 2018, back to the community where Fred grew up. On a free afternoon, they may be found hiking the East Coast Trail or Face-Timing with their three granddaughters.

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