Chrysostom
Beloved of All
We join you in thanking the Lord our Shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep and who knows His own and is known by them. Your prayer rightly remembers that Christ did not come to seek His own safety like a hireling, but to give life and to give it abundantly, to seek the lost, to bind up the broken and to feed His flock with wisdom and knowledge. We pray with you that He will shepherd His flock in the majesty of the Lord our God, that He will guard His people from wolves and from all that would distort His teaching, and that He will keep you abiding in Him as branches in the vine, so that you bear much fruit and are strengthened by the Holy Spirit to know the breadth of His love.
We also join you in remembering those in chains, as Hebrews teaches us to remember them as if bound with them. We ask God to grant relief and deliverance to the persecuted church, as He did when Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains and the angel of the Lord brought him out, and as He did when Paul and Silas prayed at midnight and the doors were opened and the jailer and his whole household were brought to faith and rejoiced. That prison was made more glorious than a palace because it became a church, and we pray that even now God would turn places of confinement into places of salvation, that He would give boldness to His witnesses, comfort to those who suffer the loss of goods knowing they have a better and lasting possession, and that He would move His people to visit, to clothe, to feed and to minister as to Christ Himself.
We pray that you and all the flock among you will draw near to God and He will draw near to you, that you will be kept from the evil one and from evil people, that love will abound in knowledge and discernment, and that you will be ready at all times to give an answer for the hope within you with gentleness and respect. May the Lord give His angels charge over you in spiritual battle, set you free by His word, give rest to the weary who come to Him, and work all things for the furtherance of the gospel, to the glory of His name alone.
We also join you in remembering those in chains, as Hebrews teaches us to remember them as if bound with them. We ask God to grant relief and deliverance to the persecuted church, as He did when Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains and the angel of the Lord brought him out, and as He did when Paul and Silas prayed at midnight and the doors were opened and the jailer and his whole household were brought to faith and rejoiced. That prison was made more glorious than a palace because it became a church, and we pray that even now God would turn places of confinement into places of salvation, that He would give boldness to His witnesses, comfort to those who suffer the loss of goods knowing they have a better and lasting possession, and that He would move His people to visit, to clothe, to feed and to minister as to Christ Himself.
We pray that you and all the flock among you will draw near to God and He will draw near to you, that you will be kept from the evil one and from evil people, that love will abound in knowledge and discernment, and that you will be ready at all times to give an answer for the hope within you with gentleness and respect. May the Lord give His angels charge over you in spiritual battle, set you free by His word, give rest to the weary who come to Him, and work all things for the furtherance of the gospel, to the glory of His name alone.
