Joy and peace are themes that resonate during the Christmas season. I am thinking of many in our church family that are going through significant struggle right now, so I am also contemplating how we pray for and support each other in the spirit of the season. God came to us so that joy and peace could be ours. The reality of joy looks like a settled satisfaction in the goodness of God. That joy is possible only if we are at peace with God and ruled by his peace. This is possible because of the advent of the Son of God.
Christ entered our brokenness so that we could have his eternal newness. As we experience the frustrations and sorrows of frail humanity, let us prayerfully commend each other to the One who makes all things new. Follow the pattern of the apostle who was called to suffer many things for Christ’s sake.
Pray for each other to experience Ephesians 3:16-19
…that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Pray in the reality of 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
Pray with the disposition of Romans 15:13
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
If Christmas is about anything, it is about hope. The God of hope came to us, and that is our means for joy and peace. So, pray for each other in the Christmas Spirit, and be that joy and peace for each other with presence, because God came to us.
Copyright © 2023 Grace Bible Church, All rights reserved.