Lord Heavenly Father,
We thank you for this day to come worship you. Let this house of worship be a place where we can praise you openly, without reservation, with all our hearts.
You are the Creator of all things. As spring is now here, we want to appreciate the beauty of all your creations. As we hear the birds sing, see the leaves on the trees grow, we remember how good and perfect you have made everything.
You are an awesome God. You give us the strength to do all things that we can't do ourselves.
Around the world, we want to continue to pray for the families of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Please comfort them as they grieve the loss of their loved ones. We want to continue to pray for the safety of the searchers as they do their work to help find answers.
In our city, we pray for our elected officials. For the leaders of our city, we pray for Your wisdom to help them govern and make decisions that will be glorifying to You.
As the Out of the Cold Program wrapped up last week, we give praise for all the volunteers who came out over the last 10 weeks to open the doors of our church to host and serve the guests of our community. As You have commanded us to love our neighbours, we thank you for moving people of our church and our community to share Your blessings and love to serve our guests. We pray that our hearts are changed so that even when we see our guests or others in need outside our church that we take the time to continue meet and build relationships with them.
We want to continue praying for our guests. We pray that You will continue to provide them shelter, food and community throughout the spring and summer and if need be that they can come join us again next year.
We pray for the Open Market. As preparation continues for the event on July 4/5, we pray for the leaders who are planning this event. It is an ambitious event, but Lord You want us to do great things. We pray that You will provide the volunteers and vendors in the coming weeks and months. You have blessed us with the Gibson Centre and we pray that the Open Market will bring out everyone from our community so that Gibson can be a hub where You will be glorified.
In our church, we want to pray for our students as they finish their school year, we pray for their focus and the strength to get through the last few months of studies with hard work and integrity. For the university students, we want to welcome them back into the T3C community and reconnect with them as they return after their final exams.
We give praise and thank you again for the blessings you have given us--whether it's our job, our family and friends, our home--You have given us so much and we are grateful.
For those of us who are experiencing some times of hardship or brokenness, let us not forget to look to You. It is through these times that our hearts can be most open to hearing and learning from You to be the men and women that You want us to be. We trust that You will make things right and we praise you that You are the one that will bring us through these storms.
We pray for the families of those who have recently lost their loved ones--Edmund and Cecilia, Alfonso and Karlenna, and Lesley. It is a difficult time for them as they mourn and grieve, but we are thankful for the relationships they had with their parents and the impact they had on their lives. As a congregation, let us continue to support them in our friendships or through prayer.
We pray for the rest of this worship time. Let it be a time where we can let go of all our other thoughts & burdens and instead focus on You. Let it be heart-filled and spirit-led.
We pray for Caleb as You use him to share Your words and teachings. Let our hearts be open to hearing and learning so that we can grow as together as men and women of God.
We lift this time to you.
In Jesus name,
Amen