Good Friday Prayer Hillcrest Covenant Church April 2, 2021 6 AM to 6 PM Welcome! This guide to prayer is provided to help you focus your prayers during our 12-Hour Good Friday Prayer. The intent of this guide is to provide you with scripture and potential topics for prayer. We hope your experience of prayer provides you with a deep sense of God’s love and sacrifice for you. Feel free to read the scriptures, reflect on the meaning of the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus and pray the suggested prayers (or your own) during your 30-minute prayer time. Thank you for joining us in this adventure of prayer. Note: Find a place to make yourself comfortable and free from distractions. Turn off your phone. Before you begin, breathe a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the opportunity to spend this time in prayer. Ask God to give you insight into the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus that will bring greater depth and meaning to your Holy Week worship experience this year. *** READ: Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10 I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River[a] to the ends of the earth. --Zechariah 9:9-10 REFLECT: According to Zechariah, the coming of the Messiah will signal the end of war in Israel. Weapons are put away. And instead of words of violence, the Messiah will speak words of peace. The coming of the Messiah does not involve the destruction of the nations but the extension of 1 blessing to the nations (Esau McCaulley, Suffering and Glory—Meditations for Holy Week and Easter, p. 4). PRAY: 1. Pray for the suffering Messiah to come into our world and bring peace and humility rather than conflict and strife. 2. Pray that as Hillcrest Covenant Church enters a new season of ministry, we will reflect the humility, patience, and love of this suffering Messiah. 3. Pray for relationships that are experiencing strife right now, ask God to bring the peace and contentment of Jesus into those relationships. *** READ: And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant— 7 these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” 8 The Sovereign LORD declares— he who gathers the exiles of Israel: “I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered.” --Isaiah 56:6-8 REFLECT: Isaiah sees a day when Jews and Gentiles will worship together. He envisions God going beyond the ethnic boundaries of Israel to gather people from all ethnicities to himself. Jesus’ ministry takes up this theme as his ministry extends to both Jews and Gentiles. The picture of 2 God’s kingdom that is being painted here is a community of people who even though they may come from different places, speak different languages, Jesus invites and accepts all of us. PRAY: 1. Thank God for welcoming all people into God’s kingdom. Echo the words of Isaiah when he says, “And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants…I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer…” 2. Pray for the Mission partnerships of Hillcrest Covenant Church. Pray for Hillcrest to embody the kind of ministry that reflects varied backgrounds and people in God’s kingdom. Pray specifically for the ministry we support around the world, in urban Kansas City, and right here in Prairie Village. 3. Pray for God to show you opportunities where you may express your faith by participating in a local mission partnership. Pray for God to expand your understanding of God’s kingdom right here in the place where you live. *** READ: 27 “You will all fall away,” Jesus told them, “for it is written: “‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’[a] 28 But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” 29 Peter declared, “Even if all fall away, I will not.” 30 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice[b] you yourself will disown me three times.” 31 But Peter insisted emphatically, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the others said the same. --Mark 14:27-31 3 REFLECT: As Holy Week unfolds, Jesus predicts that his friends and disciples will fall away. Peter declares that if that is true, it will not be true for him. Jesus responds by telling Peter that even he will disown Jesus before the cock crows three times. One thing is clear, the story of Jesus’ passion and death is accompanied by the abandonment of his disciples at the moment that Jesus needed them most. Yet, even as Jesus finds himself facing his own eventual sacrifice and death alone, there is a glimmer of hope that the disciples will turn from being fearful men seeking to save their own skin to become courageous followers of Jesus (Trish Harrison Warren, Suffering and Glory—Meditations for Holy Week and Easter, p. 27). PRAY: 1. Pray for God to use your own failures or weaknesses to draw you closer to him. 2. Pray for the church that we would not be afraid to allow our weaknesses to become the places where God’s strength is made visible. 3. Pray for a deepening experience of humility and grace with others as you recognize your own imperfections in the light of the imperfections you see in others. *** READ: He fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” --Matthew 26:39 REFLECT: We tend to think that if we are good enough, if we are godly enough, if we can get enough people praying for whatever it is we are desperate to see God do, then God will be inclined to say “yes” to our prayers—that we’ll be able to bend God’s will toward what we’ve determined to be the best outcome. This episode during Holy Week seems to suggest otherwise. If anyone deserved to have their prayers answered, it was Jesus. But the obedient son’s plea to his Father is met with silence. Someone has suggested that God said “no” to Jesus so that he could say “yes” to you and me for all of eternity. 4 PRAY: 1. Pray for a growing awareness that our prayers may not always result in the outcomes we hope and pray for. And even when we don’t see direct answers to our prayers, we can have confidence of God’s love for us. 2. What are the honest desires you bring before God, while you simultaneously pray for God’s will to be done and not yours? 3. Pray for God to shape your life to be characterized by Jesus’ words, “not as I will, but as you will.” Pray for the courage to fully surrender your will to God. *** READ: 23 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. 27 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. 30 Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up[a] from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” --John 12:23-32 REFLECT: John’s gospel builds toward the climactic hour when Jesus’ being “lifted up” on the cross is the moment he is enthroned in glory. The cross becomes the “throne” from which Christ rules the world. The cross is also the fulcrum upon which the logic of the world is turned upside down. Our shame is transformed into glory, foolishness into wisdom, and humiliation into exaltation. The apostle Paul says, “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor 1:18).