Renewal is this weeks prayer focus

Renewal is this week's prayer focus

Continuing throughout January, Elim churches are joining the LIFT UP month of prayer focusing on the subject of New Horizons. Over the next 7 days, the focus turns to renewal.

To RENEW means “a renovation, restoration, transformation and a change of heart and life”. Michael Marcel says in his book Prepare for Revival, “renewal is when there is an outpouring which touches active Christians in the church.” As we focus on Isaiah 43:18-21 this month we pray for renewal.

Isaiah 43: 18 – 19 is a promise to Israel that God will do something new, something far greater than He has done before. Far greater than bringing them out of Egypt, a promise of a better life in every way. It’s a promise of deliverance and a promise of a coming Messiah who will make all things new. As God’s people we have the joy to be renewed personally in our inner man, so those dry places in each of our lives may be watered by the Holy Spirit, the rivers in the desert places, that causes life to grow and flourish in abundance.

God wants to do something far greater than He has ever done before in our lives and in our churches, the society we live in, our towns and cities and nations of the world. It is only God that can do this by the power of His Holy Spirit. As we allow Him to renew us we will see the truth of Isaiah 43 begin worked out in our lives and the renewing transforming power of God will become evident.

We know that we are new creations in Christ Jesus, the old has gone and the new has come. Yet inwardly we are to be renewed daily by the Holy Spirit. As we spend time in His presence and read His word so we are renewed and become carriers of His presence to all those we meet in our daily lives. The transforming power and presence of God renews not just us but all we meet.

All that has gone before is good and we are thankful for that but greater things are yet to come. As we are at the beginning of this New Year and also this new season in Elim’s life we look forward to what God will do.

I am doing a new thing, do you not perceive it? The words of God to us in our day. He will make a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. What a promise to us as we move forward together in this new season. The waste places of our communities will be refreshed by the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. The desert places where we have found we have never been able to see Kingdom life will be change, new things will begin to spring up. New ways of expressing Kingdom, houses of prayer, church plants, missional communities. Kingdom growth will take place as the Holy Spirit waters the dry places. The parts of your communities that have been hard to reach, the people whose hearts have been hardened to the gospel will be open to receive the good news because God says He is doing a new thing.

He begins with His people, with us and we then take our renewed transformed lives out of the church into the world and see the renewal affect a family, a workplace, a community, a town, a city a nation.

View the full prayer guide and resources