Kitty O'Shea's Prayer Group - August 28, 2006

Seven regulars, including newly passed Dr Madden, gathered at Kitty’s to pray today together with Matt who had visited once before.

We shared various needs since several arrived feeling beleaguered for various reasons; and impressions, including Sam’s from recent evangelization in Chinatown that people there were:

• Often aware of Christ and his claims; but had felt hurt or rejected by the church, and had left it; and/or
• Were able to rationalize to themselves their involvement in questionable and sinful activities.

Kelly read from Scripture of “not growing weary of doing good”; and of the armor of God, in which, having done all, we stand.

In prayer, we sought to lead our way into warfare with praise. We were grateful for Kelly’s successful defence; and for the various ways in which God was at work in and around us. We acknowledged the broken covenants which surround us in our society—through failed marriages, lapsed Christians and churches. In the spirit of Isaiah who saw Jerusalem as beautiful and bedecked in jewels, even while she was ruined and broken during the exile, we prayed for the city of Boston—that God would remove the spiritual ‘refuse’ of brokenness and unforgiven sin which is piled high in her streets. This was as true for Chinatown as for the city as a whole. We prayed for the church as a whole; and for workers to be sent into the ‘fields white for harvest’.

We also prayed for Kitty O’Sheas—that it would experience and know God’s blessing; such that in years to come, we could look back to the time when it was a place for alcoholic spirits but became a place for God’s spirit.

We continued to pray for trouble spots in the wider world, including Afganistan, Uzbekistan, and southern Lebanon. We remembered missionaries we knew who were in, or shortly to be in, Africa.

We also remembered personal needs including:

• Joanna’s work situation;
• The marriage of Hank’s friend Tim;
• Andrea’s new situation of misunderstanding in the workplace.

We asked that all would sense God’s hand in and through circumstances, so that they would be alert to his signals where change was needed; and that they would receive clear confirmation of what God is saying.

-D. Porteous