Did you know we publish ‘Pray For Change’, a daily prayer diary which comes out four times a year with up-to-date requests and news? Each edition covers a variety of topics - different staff members highlighting prayer needs from across the nations and regions and the Support Centre. Each edition also includes a week of prayers written by a young person. Sarah, age 20, recently contributed some prayers:
- “Pray for young people who have lost their faith through the pandemic. Pray for people to help the generations out there that have experienced this to help them find their way.”
- “Pray for forgiveness. There are many young people that feel they don’t believe or deserve the church because of their actions or decisions. Pray for many who live with guilt and shame and can’t forgive themselves, that they would know God’s forgiveness.”
- “Pray for confidence. Many young people are too scared to stand up for what they believe in or for what is right. Pray they can be built up and believed in and through that their confidence would grow for all they do.”
These are always particularly valued by prayer supporters:
- “I have been touched this week by the directness of the prayer suggestions - we can all learn from the young.”
- “He wrote such sensitive, mature and wise prayers - Found it so encouraging.”
- “I felt that I began to understand a little bit about the challenges facing the young today - there was a certain freshness with the points she raised.”
We give the names of a few Urban Saints Groups to pray for each week and we also include a prayer focus – an article which highlights different aspects about prayer. Here is an extract from the October to December 2021 edition, written by Serena McCarthy, Energize Editor, sharing a discussion with her youth group about why they find prayer difficult:
“In my nearly twenty-five years of youth ministry, I have discovered that the easiest way to get a group of young people to stop talking is to ask them to pray… We talked about specific concerns they had, and then I encouraged the young people to think about one thing they would want to change about these issues. I asked them to write two or three sentences that expressed the feelings that they had most strongly toward these issues. As a group we shared our sentences with each other. One of the teenagers at this point commented, ‘Is this what you do when you pray?’ YES!”
Would you like to join us in Praying For Change in the lives of the children and young people of this land? “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16). We would love to encourage you to join us in praying for young people in this way. You can sign up to receive the prayer diary at www.urbansaints.org/contact or contact us at the Urban Saints Support Centre if you are not on the internet.
Save the date: Our next 24/2 prayer event will be held from Friday 25th March to Sunday 27th March 2022.
Click here for more ways to support Urban Saints in prayer