relationships and community on Requests

Be present, O Lord, to our requests; and as you give us a desire to pray, grant us, O most Loving God, your aid and comfort in our prayers; and may the souls which thirst for your promises be filled f...

Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you; and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered toget...

Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. His offer of salvation always brings with it the requirem...

Several years ago I was part of a small group with a friend who was working with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Georgetown University. As we shared prayer requests at the end of one of our meeti...

Intertwined Narratives Jesus’ encounters with Jairus’ daughter and the bleeding woman are sandwiched together with the intention that the two narratives would unlock and help to interpret the other....

O Lord and Father of the household of faith, we thank you for the gift of faith worked within us by your Holy Spirit. We thank you for having called us to yourself, for consecrating us to your ser...

Leader: May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ give you the one great thing that you seek: that you may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of your lives, and that you may gaze upon H...

Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom.

Invitations are powerful. Like tides, they ebb and flow, shaping the contours of our existence. Some invitations we desperately want but never get—“Will you marry me?” or “Would you consider a promoti...

Desire is something no child has to be taught. Early in the developmental process, most of a child’s desires center around physical needs being met or objects that attract interest. If a child is secu...

One of the reasons I love a good invitation is that I get tired of being told what to do. As the very responsible oldest daughter of a pastor and someone who entered vocational ministry at a young age...

Invitations shape who we know, where we go, what we do and who we become. Invitations can challenge and remake us. They can erode and devastate. And they can also heal and restore us. Being wanted, we...

May we ask according to your will, not according to our desires, for you will give us what is right for us. May we seek you as the pearl of great price, not half-heartedly but with our whole being, fo...

Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.

O God, grant that whatever good things I have, I may share generously with those who have not, and whatever good things I do not have, I may request humbly from those who do.

Eternal and Generous God, Every good gift comes from You. Your generosity is expressed best Through Jesus, the Crucified and Risen One, Who gave Himself for us. We acknowledge we often doubt Your will...

Desires are best understood as our most honest experiences of ourselves, in all our complexity and depth, as we relate to people and things around us

Sometimes the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than w...

We desire your presence with us, O God. Still our restless spirits, that with quiet minds and reverent hearts we may hear your voice and worthily worship you. Amen .

In his book Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes , professor and missionary Kenneth Bailey unlocked some very interesting features of the parable of the prodigal son, here focused on what it m...

The truth, however, is that when we say yes to invitations that keep us compulsively busy, we may be exhibiting a lazy ambivalence that actually keeps us distracted from the invitations that matter mo...

Gracious God, give us humble, teachable, and obedient hearts, that we may receive what you have revealed, and do what you have commanded. Amen.

God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We need to hear Your invitation and promise to come to us when we are weary and burdened, and you’ll give us rest ... rest for our souls. So we come. We come with our...

Constantly choose rather to want less, than to have more.

O Lord our God, you are always more ready to bestow your good gifts on us than we are to seek them, and are willing to give more than we desire or deserve. Help us so to seek that we may truly find, s...

Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It's not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He's made us to love, what it is that cap...

In the course of the silence after each bidding, the People offer their own prayers, either silently or aloud. I ask your prayers for God's people throughout the world; for our Bishop(s) ; for t...

[Belonging is] the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only ...

We have set our hope on you, our living God, as those who set course for home from distant places. But we need your help if we are to keep on course: we need fresh sight of you, on which to check our ...

O gracious Father, who opens your hand and fills all living things with abundance: Bless the lands and waters, and multiply the harvests of the world; send your Spirit into the world, that it may rene...