CARE Prayer Diary

In this issue:

FAMILIES AND MARRIAGE

MODERN DAY SLAVERY

FREEDOM FROM ADDICTIONS

ENDING POVERTY

AFTER COVID

FRAGILE WORLD

BACK TO SCHOOL

GEO-POLITICAL TENSIONS

SPREADING GOD’S WORD

CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS

UPHOLDING JUSTICE

GLOBAL HEALTH

SPEAKING FOR THE VOICELESS

‘Blessed is the person who obeys the law of the Lord… The law of the Lord gives them joy. They think about his law day and night. That kind of person is like a tree that is planted near a stream of water. It always bears its fruit at the right time. Its leaves don’t dry up. Everything godly people do turns out well.’

PSALM 1:1-3 (NIRV)

The CARE Prayer Diary is written by Celia Bowring. To read online please visit: care.org.uk/about/our-publications praynow4.org/care

To sign up for daily Prayer Diary emails or to update your mailing preferences, please call: 020 7233 0455 or email: mail@care.org.uk.

To contribute to CARE’s ongoing ministry, please go to: care.org.uk/donate

Would someone you know like to receive a free copy of the Prayer Diary? Get in touch and we’ll post one to them.

SUN 23 Loving Father, thank You for Your design for marriage and family life, uniting individuals in love across the generations, to raise children and care for one another. Above all, we are grateful that You have adopted us into Your Family through Your Son. Amen.

MON 24 God of wisdom, please guide our Government to introduce policies that encourage couples to marry and stay together through fairer taxation and other incentives. We also pray about the huge amount of money that couples considering marriage feel they must spend on a wedding and the pressure that brings. By Your grace. Amen.

TUES 25

WED 26

Father, we bring to You troubled families whose children need to be taken into care. Please provide foster or adoptive families where they can flourish and grow, and grant mercy and hope to parents who are unable to look after their children safely. In Your mercy. Amen.

O Lord, please help those in church leadership to stand firm on the biblical truth that marriage is between one man and one woman and resist pressures to accept other definitions in the name of equality and tolerance. May we be gracious to those who disagree without compromising this crucial Christian doctrine. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

‘So, God created human beings in his image … male and female. God blessed them and said, “Have many children and grow in number. Fill the earth and be its master.”’

GENESIS 1:27,28 (INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S BIBLE)

THURS 27

Lord we pray for a positive shift in society towards a belief that a couple’s commitment to marriage is the best basis for family life, whilst continuing to offer support to those raising children in the UK’s three million lone parent families. Please raise up opinion-shapers in the media, politics and other areas who will promote this. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

FRI 28 Thank You, Father, for the proven major benefits of marriage for individuals, children, family life and society as a whole. Please strengthen the relationships of engaged couples and husbands and wives, especially during times of difficulty. In Your mercy. Amen.

SAT 29

God of compassion, we lift to You older couples who face illness and other problems. Grant them protection, comfort and strength through the love of family and friends and other support. We pray too for those who are widowed to be held in Your loving care in the midst of loneliness and changes in their lives. Amen.

‘Our 2021 survey shows that marriage remains universally popular, with nine in ten young people across all of society aspiring to marry, regardless of income or any other factor.’ (Sir Paul Coleridge, Founder of Marriage Foundation)

SUN 30 WORLD DAY AGAINST TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS: ‘Role of technology to enable and impede human trafficking’. Lord, we pray for criminals’ increasing use of cyberspace in their recruitment, exploitation and control of victims to encounter problems. May law enforcement agencies track down many traffickers as they employ the same technology, to bring them to justice. For Christ’s sake. Amen.

MON 31 Almighty God, please help victims of modern slavery: forced to work for little or no pay in miserable living conditions and often subjected to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. May they look to You for ways of escape and find safe places where they can recover and begin to rebuild their lives. In Your mercy. Amen.

TUES 1 Lord, we pray that as the Illegal Migration Bill becomes law it will protect modern slavery victims from being deported, and for provision to be made for them to be rescued from their traffickers and treated with justice and compassion. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

WED 2 Father, please protect vulnerable individuals targeted by heartless traffickers planning to exploit them who are taken in by deception or are helpless to resist coercion. We also pray for families in deep poverty that agree in good faith to send their children away for a supposedly better life. Help them to say ‘no’. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

‘Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.’

PSALM 82:3,4 (ESV)

THURS 3 God of justice, we remember refugees fleeing from Ukraine and elsewhere who are particularly vulnerable to being trafficked and exploited. We pray that governments and other agencies will take effective steps to protect them. In Your great mercy. Amen.

FRI 4 Thank You, Lord, that UK law requires businesses with a turnover of £36 million to publish annual statements to explain what they are doing to tackle modern slavery in their supply chains. May this spread to other countries and be an effective deterrent to traffickers. For Christ’s sake. Amen.

SAT 5 Father we pray for anti-trafficking organisations, many of them Christian, to be successful in their work of offering support to victims and to be able to work increasingly in partnership with the police and other statutory agencies. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

In the UK an estimated 100,000 people are in modern slavery. The global figure is 40.3 million. Women, children and men can be trafficked into prostitution, pornography, agricultural and construction labour, manufacturing, domestic servitude, forced begging, benefit fraud, petty criminality and to harvest body organs.