Prayer for Friendship Sunday 2017

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of life in all its vast arrays and complexity. 

We thank you for the gift of friendship.

We thank you for the way you knit our lives together across racial, economic, social, political and developmental boundaries.

Truly, it is only in Christ, your Son, that such diversity can be found and it is a testimony to your redeeming love.

Jesus we thank you that you modeled a life of service and compassion to the people whom society often forgot or ignored. 

We rejoice that you have set us an example and sent us out with a mandate to go and do likewise. (Good Sam)

We need your loving eyes in order to care for those you have put in our midst.

We need greater grace in order to serve and spend ourselves on behalf of the needy.

Holy Spirit, we thank you for raising up mentors and leaders for Friendship. 

We know that you are the one who convicts our hearts of sin, and we confess that we have often judged people based upon external appearance instead of upon the state of the heart. Forgive us and give us the eyes of Christ to look upon all whom we contact, as people created in your image.

We ask you to continue to empower your servants to love and service.

Open hearts to genuine friendship, true compassion and strengthen all who serve that they might not tire.

Encourage our friendship participants. Where they already know Christ, we ask you to grow their walk with the Lord. Where they have not yet entered into a relationship with Jesus, please work in their hearts to bring them to a place where genuine conversion, turning from sin and embracing Jesus’ work on the cross, occurs in their life.

Spirit, increasingly teach us how to love and integrate into your Church, all those who struggle with various developmental, emotional, or physical struggles.

Spirit we ask you to grow the Friendship ministry. Provide more students, provide more mentors, provide ______________(Friendship Director's Name) with support staff and leaders so that his/her workload doesn’t change but more students, families and caregivers are served, loved and introduced to the Son of God.

Give us creativity and new ways of teaching, talking and sharing so that true fellowship is created.

We ask all of this so that God the Father is Glorified, Christ the Son is Exalted and the Holy Spirit is not grieved. Amen.