At West Side, we handed out prayer guides each Sunday during Lent. Here’s the final one for use during Holy Week (see the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth guides).
Lenten Prayer Guide
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?” (John 12:27a)
Ask God in prayer:
What have I been avoiding in life?
What have I been avoiding in prayer?
Who have I been avoiding?
What has God been asking me to do that I have been afraid of and not wanting to listen, but I can still hear?
Is there something in my life that keeps me from praying or approaching God or worshiping?
If there’s something troubling your heart and you can’t name it, cry out to God and share your emotion with him. Your spirit can communicate with his Spirit without words. (Romans 8:26)
No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” (John 12:27b-28a)
Just like Jesus, it is in prayer we find the courage and the confidence to face the hard things in life. And we know that God has the final say and he will be glorified!
Pray:
… for God’s direction and his courage and confidence.
… that I rely upon God and God alone in this situation.
… that God be glorified in the midst of this situation.
… that I be surrendered to God’s will and that God gives me his peace.
Philip Yancey says that for Jesus, in time of testing and conflict, prayer was the battle itself. “Prayer mattered that much.” Haddon Robinson asks where was it that Jesus sweat great drops of blood. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane. There he “offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save him from death” (Hebrews 5:7).
Had I been there … I might have said, “what will he do when he faces a real crisis? Why can’t he approach this ordeal with the calm confidence of his three sleeping friends?” Yet, when the test came, Jesus walked to the cross with courage, and his three friends fell apart and fell away.