Today we pray for Attendees: Crystal, Tiffany, Wendy, Heather, Hannah, Nicole
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever. (Psalm 121:8)
Dear Father,
The women coming to the retreat have said too many goodbyes. It isn’t easy to transition and many of our guests have faced co-workers coming and going and relocations of their own.
Even coming to the retreat is another “change.” Please help the women who are attending the retreat to be able to quickly adjust to the retreat’s setting and pace. May they find deep rest and renewal, new friends and encouragement as they set aside some time to be still and know that you are God.
May the Thrive Retreat be a place of healing for all of their transitions and a place to gently walk with you through whatever change that might be coming. Transitions are not easy. We are so thankful we don’t have to live them without You!
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
©2017 Thrive
Attendee Country of Service Prayer Focus Nation: France
Challenges for Prayer:
The accelerating decline of religious faith since the 18th Century has seen France’s Catholic and mainline Protestant legacies plummet in recent years, even as atheism has grown. Hostility toward organized religion as well as the privatization of spirituality mean that regular attendance in any church is below 8%. Some surveys show that over 30% of French people are non-religious. Most French have a profound ignorance of, or indifference to, the gospel, many having never meaningfully encountered it. Yet, the relativism of postmodernity has generated acute emptiness and existential angst; as many have noted, this in turn has created a spiritual hunger that has grown rapidly in recent years. Pray that such hunger might overcome the suspicion toward religion. Pray that Christians would be prepared to patiently and relationally share Jesus with those who seek.
Protestants were accepted at the Reformation, and at one stage some estimate that up to 25% of the French population had embraced the new teaching. But persecution (from the mid-16th Century until the late 18th Century), humanism and nominalism (in the last 200 years) have reduced this to 1.9% in 2010. Protestantism – though widely respected – is spiritually compromised by liberal theology, universalism and the acceptance of contradictory doctrinal and ethical views. Protestants are more numerous in Alsace and the south, but nominalism and decline are common. Yet there are staunch evangelical believers in most Reformed and Lutheran congregations. Pray for restoration to the faith and commitment shown by their martyr forebears.
Excerpts taken from Operation World