Ten Things to Pray about the Covid-19 Pandemic

• "Intercede for God's mercy"
• "Give thanks for those caring for vulnerable people"
• "Ask God to grant success to medical researchers"
• "Pray for our churches"
• "Pray for those in badly affected places"
• "Pray for the NHS"
• "Ask God to watch over those in need of rescue and support"
• "Call on God to pour out his Spirit upon his people"
• "Pray about the economic effects"
• "Intercede for leaders around the world"

With each one is a verse and short prayer. Most of them respond to the problems we face in the situation of the pandemic, as sufferers of Covid-19. However, I felt there was something missing, and in my heart I wanted to pray for something more. For instance, there is nothing about repentance.

I had just written an article 'Making Sense of Covid-19', which helped me understand the 'bigger picture'. I realised that some of the things there needed to be prayed over. So I began putting down some notes, and very quickly, the ten points for prayer below flowed out. (In my life, when things flow out, it is often a sign of something being 'right').

The points link to a bigger, longer-term picture, in which sees God calling us to:

• Rethinking: Covid-19 opens us up to Realities;
• Repentance: Covid-19 calls for a change in direction;
• Rewiring: Covid-19 demands deeper changes than we might think: the 'New Normal';
• Responsibility: Covid-19 makes us all responsible, some specially so;
• Representation: Covid-19 calls us to higher things;
• Reassurance: Covid-19 and Christ.

Its message is that God's people are with the world in tackling this, and should lead in moving forward to the 'New Normal', in which we move away from our previous lifestyle that was doing so much damage to the earth. It sees salvation through Christ alone and indwelling by the Holy Spirit is crucial to this and leading naturally to this (see Three Dimensions of Salvation).

• Thank God for the good that still lies in human beings, and that it has been revealed by the pandemic.

• Thank God especially for the NHS workers who are sacrificing themselves for us all and ask that God's blessing will come upon them.

• Intercede for God's mercy on and protection of Africa and the Two-thirds World that lack the huge resources in their health systems that are in the affluent nations.

• Plead with God to open the eyes of our leaders to the reality of the damage we have been doing in and to the world.

• Thank God for his mercy in sending messages to warn us to open up to reality and repent.

• Intercede for the people of God to wake up to our role as representing God among the peoples, and the responsibility that goes along with this: a responsibility to not live for ourselves or our comfort, but for Him who dies for us and rose again.

• Plead that God's people will see their own need of repentance - lack of deep discipleship, for living for ourselves more than representing God among the people.

• Plead for a spirit of repentance among the affluent peoples of the world, and their leaders (as occurred in Nineveh).

• Ask God to move his people to take a lead in the repentance, rethinking and rewiring that is needed in the world.

Maybe we can pray from the two lists together?

This page, "http://abxn.org/covid19.praying.html" is part of Andrew Basden's abxn.org pages - pages that open up discussion and exploration from a Christian ('xn') perspective. Written on the Amiga with Protext, in the style of classic HTML.

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Created: 21 April 2020. Last updated: