Until I injured the muscle across the top of my chest, I
didn’t know it was there. I mean, I know about glutes and biceps and triceps
and six packs and so on, but a muscle across the bony top of my chest? It went
unnoticed.
Now, however. Now I am reminded of it as I turn over in bed,
as I try to raise my arms or perform other unremarkable moves. Ouch!
I’ve just been reading Ephesians 4. Thinking about unity in
the body of Christ, and that led me to think about the unseen, unnoticed
ligaments and muscles that hold each of our churches together. I prayed for the
teams of junior church, of property managers, of those on rotas, but as I sat
with God, I was drawn to pray for the invisible cohort who literally strengthen
and hold together the lungs of the church: all those who pray for hearts to be
open to the Saviour. All those who pray on teams and alone. Known and unknown. Now
and over millennia, silently and noisily calling out to God to pour out his
Spirit on Banchory and this beautiful area. To fill hearts and lungs with the powerful
Holy Spirit of God. To turn lives round to Jesus.
Lord, strengthen and bless this crucial ligament so that the
body of Christ may act justly, love mercy and walk humbly before the Lord here
in Banchory and Deeside, and across the world.
And Father, my eyes are still focused on the continuing
conflagration in Los Angeles. Lord, I continue to pray for destructive winds to
cease and refreshing, restoring rains to come. I also continue to pray for
spiritual rain to fall across the Southland, that lives which are tinder-dry
would be watered from above and filled from within with your refreshing,
everlasting water of life. I continue to cry out for the City of Angels, my
city. Have mercy, Lord. May spiritual smoke alarms be beeping now in the hearts
of many who recognise the precarious tinder-dryness of their lives. May many
turn to you in these dreadful days. Douse the physical fires, and may the
purifying fire of your Spirit consume the dry kindling of empty lives and
hearts. Lord, nearly half a century ago, your Spirit kindled a fire within my
dry and desperate heart, cleansing and filling me and inspiring me to open the
door of my life to Jesus, to invite him to come in and sit and eat with me.
Work this miracle of salvation in hundreds, thousands of hearts now, Lord.
May my prayer join the prayers of that invisible ligament of
pray-ers, enabling spiritual lungs to be filled with the very breath of God.
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