Spiritual Reflections
It’s good to pray together, share together, encourage one another and learn together.
The YBA produces resources and reflections to encourage churches to think about Lent, Advent and other key times in our Christian calendar.
We have been blessed to hear your stories which have resulted from these shared studies.
Please feel free to adapt/update and use any of these resources.
The New Prayer Diary 2024
Prayers for w.c. May 12th 2024
Updating…
Guiseley Baptist Church, Leeds Guiseley Baptist Church
Please pray for the impact of our Children’s and Youth work, our Job Club and Seniors activities.
Harehills Lane Baptist Church Harehills Lane Baptist Church (hlbc.org.uk)
Harehills Lane Baptist Church is a gathered community based in the Harehills and Chapeltown area of Leeds. As a church family we are an inclusive community, welcoming a wide mix of people from different walks of life, many nationalities and languages, across ages and traditions, and with different theological views.
On Monday lunchtimes, during school term time we open our doors as a cafe. From mums and tots to walking groups, asylum seekers and painter-decorators, we welcome in everybody for a good, home-cooked meal or a friendly cup of tea. This cafe is run entirely by a regular team of around 12 volunteers from HLBC and friends from the local community.
We also provide informal support in reading, writing and conversation for speakers of other languages, in a safe and friendly environment for women.
Please can you pray for these activities plus our Creative Studio and our support of the local community. Also please pray for the church as a whole and give thanks for our volunteers.
The changes we have made - And why we have made them
Prayer undergirds the work of the YBA. Prayer demonstrates our utter reliance on God and our care for one another. One of the ways we do this as a staff team and wider Baptist family, is by regularly praying for all our churches through the year using the YBA prayer diary. Thank you to all who have been doing this faithfully or maybe even sporadically. For those who may not know, each week, a couple of our churches are featured in the prayer diary and become the focus of prayers from other churches and people across our Association. We may not know the specific needs of these churches, but we hold them in our hearts in prayer before the Lord seeking His blessing over them and their ministry.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were to additionally be able to pray for the specific, expressed needs of our featured churches each week? That is exactly what we want to do this year – to raise up the specific needs of our churches before God’s throne of grace in obedience to His word: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Phil 4.6).
Ahead of their scheduled week, we will be inviting our featured churches to send in a short paragraph about their contexts and/or congregation alongside a few bullet points – three or four – of specific things our YBA family could be giving thanks for or praying for them that week and possibly beyond. This will be uploaded on to the Prayer & Spiritual Reflection section of the YBA website. If they want to include some photos (cleared of course for safeguarding) that would be great. Any church who, for any reason, was unable to send in their praise report and prayer requests, will still get prayed for in a general way.
So be on the lookout for your church’s invitation to send in your prayer points and also do check out this area of the ‘Prayer & Spiritual Reflection’ section of the website, each week, so you can pray with knowledge and specificity for the needs of our churches across Yorkshire. We look forward to celebrating specific answered prayers as we join together in praying for our churches.
If you have any questions about the administration of the prayer diary, please contact Hilary via hilary.dockerill@yba.org.uk
Nike Adebajo
YBA Regional Minister