The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these. Mark 12:31
Neighbourhoods
Take a moment to think about where you live. Your neighbourhood. Take a look outside and look at your street. Maybe you know your neighbours by name or you just know their faces or maybe you don’t know them at all. Take a moment and pray for them. When we pray for those that we may not know personally, this is a great opportunity to practice listening. How is God directing you to pray for your neighbours? Now move a bit further out into your neighbourhood. Open up Google Maps and look at what is in your neighbourhood (or weather permitting, go for a walk). Do you see a school? Pray for that school. Pray for the teachers and the students. Is there a church in your neighbourhood? Pray that God would use that church to further His kingdom. Are there any local businesses in the area? Pray for the owners and employees of those businesses, that they would be fruitful. Whatever it is you come across as your explore your neighbourhood, pray God’s blessing over those things.
Networks & Communities
As I was looking up different forms of prayer for this week, I came across something called Virtual Prayer Walking. The idea is to look at your different online platforms such as social media or email and to use them to pray. Open up Facebook or Instagram and as you scroll through your news feed you will notice that it can become a list of prayer requests. Notice whose name pops up and what they are posting about. Perhaps a friend posts a picture of their new baby. Pray for that new family and the challenges that come along with being new parents. Or another friend is posting pictures of their vacation. Pray that God would keep them safe and that they would find rest. Or open up your inbox and look through the list of emails that you have and whose name you come across. Perhaps you can go as far as praying about the email content itself or simply just for the person who sent it. Or pull out your FV Directory or personal phone book. Use that as another prayer list. These different things are ways to easily access your personal networks and communities and to begin using them as opportunities for prayer.
The other part of this is to think about the neighbourhoods, networks and communities of ForestView. Go back through and look at it for ForestView. – Virtual Prayer Map for ForestView
You will quickly begin to notice that there are many opportunities to pray for those around us if we just start looking for them.
God, open our eyes to the needs of our neighbours, colleagues and friends.
