Prayer For Christ’s Church – Drawn from Zechariah 7-8


(In my morning devotional reading, I worked through Zechariah 7-8. It brought me to this prayer):


O LORD of hosts, who has promised to hear your people, unless they refuse to hear you, “as I called, and they would not hear, so they called and I would not hear” (Zechariah 7.13; see also Isaiah 59.1-4 and 1 Peter 3.7): please turn our hearts and the hearts of all your people to hear and heed you. O Lord, hear our prayer.

O LORD of hosts, who sometimes disciplines your people by creating disharmony and disunity, “for I set every man against his neighbor” (Zechariah 8.11) – forgive us; bring us to love anew truth and peace (8.19); turn our seasons of mourning and fasting into joy, gladness, and cheerfulness; save us (8.7, 13); and restore us so that there “shall be a sowing of peace” (8.12). O Lord, hear our prayer.

O LORD of hosts, who desires us to be your people and you to be our God in faithfulness and in righteousness (8.8); bring us to speak the truth to one another; to render in our gates judgments that are true and make for peace; to not devise evil in our hearts against one another and not to love false oaths – all of which you hate (8.16-17). O Lord, hear our prayer.

O LORD of hosts, may we fear not, and may our hands be strong for you, to you, and in your work (8.9, 13). O LORD, hear our prayer, and let our cry come unto you. O Lord, hear our prayer.

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