A Prayer Journey for the Places God Has Sent Us: My City
During this prayer series, we are praying in widening circles from our own hearts to our homes, streets, relational networks, city, and ultimately the harvest. So far, we have prayed for the people and places closest to us. This week, we lift our eyes toward the larger community we share with others.
Along the way, we are asking God to help us pay attention, pray specifically, and recognize where he is already at work.
My City: Seek Its Flourishing
It is easy to care about a place when it is giving us what we want. It is harder to seek its good when it is broken, frustrating, unfamiliar, or simply not the place we would have chosen.
In Jeremiah 29, God’s people are living in exile in Babylon. This is not their home, and these are not circumstances they chose. Yet God tells them to build houses, plant gardens, raise families, and seek the peace and prosperity of the city where they now live. They are to pray for it because its flourishing is connected to their own.
That is a remarkable posture toward a place.
When we say “my city,” we mean the larger community of which you are a part. It may be a city, town, or another shared community. It is bigger than the people you personally know. It includes people whose lives may be very different from yours, places you rarely go, needs you may not see, and good things happening that you may never experience personally.
This week, we are going to ask God to help us see that larger place with his eyes. Where is it flourishing? Where is it hurting? Who is being overlooked? And what would it look like for the peace, justice, goodness, and wholeness of God’s kingdom to become more visible there?
Read: Jeremiah 29:4-7
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.
Notice
Read Jeremiah 29:4–7 again and pay attention to God’s words: “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city...Pray to the Lord for it.”
Now bring your city or community to mind. Think about the places you know well and the places you rarely see, the people whose lives regularly cross yours and those whose experience of your city may be very different from your own.
Where do you see signs of flourishing? What is good, beautiful, healthy, or life-giving that you can thank God for? Where do you see brokenness, injustice, loneliness, division, or need? Who seems to be flourishing in your city, and who might be struggling or overlooked?
Be honest about what you don’t know as well. Our experience of a city can become our understanding of the city, even though we only ever see a small part of it.
Ask God: What do you want me to see about this “city” that I may not see on my own?
Take some time to listen. Pay attention to particular people, places, needs, or signs of hope that come to mind.
Pray for your city
Bring before God the people, places, needs, and signs of hope that came to mind.
Begin by thanking God for what is good. Pray for the people who are creating, serving, leading, caring, building, teaching, protecting, healing, and working for the good of others. Ask God to strengthen what contributes to your city’s flourishing.
Then bring before him what is broken. Pray for the places where people are hurting, divided, isolated, overlooked, or experiencing injustice. Ask God to bring healing where there is pain, reconciliation where there is division, justice where there is wrong, and hope where people have grown discouraged.
Pray especially for people whose experience of your city may be very different from your own. Ask God to help you pray beyond what affects you personally and to deepen your desire for the flourishing of the whole community.
As you pray, ask: God, where does your peace need to take deeper root in this city? Who or what are you inviting me to continue carrying in prayer?
Stay with whatever God brings to mind and pray for his shalom, his peace, wholeness, justice, and flourishing, to become increasingly visible there.
Consider
God told his people to pray for the city, but he also told them to build houses, plant gardens, and invest their lives there. Their prayers for the flourishing of Babylon were connected to the way they lived within it.
As you have prayed for your city, consider whether God is drawing your attention toward a particular person, place, or need. Where might you already have an opportunity to contribute to the good of the community around you? Where could your presence, relationships, gifts, or resources become part of God’s answer to the things you are praying for?
Ask God: Is there a place where you are inviting me to seek the flourishing of my city, not only in prayer, but in the way I live?
Don’t assume this needs to become something new. God may be inviting you to become more intentional about something already in front of you, support good work someone else is doing, cross a boundary you normally wouldn’t cross, or simply keep praying faithfully for something he has put on your heart.
Listen for what God brings to mind and talk with him about how you might respond.
Pray for the network
Now widen your prayer beyond your own city or community. Pray for the many cities, towns, neighborhoods, and communities represented across the Kansas City Underground.
Ask God to give us a deep love for the places where he has sent us. Pray that we would become people who seek the flourishing of the whole community, not only the people and places most familiar to us or most like us.
Pray for the places where we live where there is brokenness, injustice, division, loneliness, or need. Ask God to help us see people and places that are easily overlooked and to show us where his peace and restoration are already taking root.
Pray that our microchurches, disciple-makers, and communities would become a blessing to the places around them. Ask God to form us into people who pray for our cities, participate in their flourishing, and faithfully join him in bringing his peace, justice, healing, and hope wherever he has sent us.