Orphan Sunday

Dear Father, 

On this Orphan Sunday, we join with Your people across our country and beyond to pray for orphans. 

We know that love for these precious children begins not with us, but with You. You pursued us when we were wayward and alone. You adopted us as your children. You invite us to address you as Daddy and to live as Your sons and daughters. Truly, we love because You first loved us. 

You tell us also that You are near to the downtrodden and destitute. Your heart aches for children that face the world alone. You champion the cause of those who have no one else to take their side. And You call us to do the same. 

So we pray that You would rouse us to share your heart. We ask that You would stir Your people to passion and vision and action on behalf of children that have no family. 

We lift up to You the millions of children in the world who have lost their parents to disease, to war, to addiction, to poverty, to abandonment. As You promise to do, place the lonely in families. Be their defender, their provider, their hope and peace. Help us to do the same. 

We pray also for the five hundred thousand children in our foster system in America. So often, they are bounced from home to home, knowing little love, consistency or true nurture. Please be their love, their consistency, their nurture. Help us to do the same. 

We confess that we have often lived with little regard for these precious lives. Please forgive us. Lead us to take up their cause, not in guilt or obligation, but as a joyful response to Your great love for us. 

As we do, we pray that You would use our humble response to transform. To transform the lives of countless orphans both physically and spiritually. To transform us as we encounter You in them. To transform Your Church as we lift our eyes beyond our own comfort and self-focused religion to live out the painful beauty of the Gospel. And finally, to transform a watching world as it catches glimpses of Your love made visible through the actions of Your people. 

We commit all this to You, the One who is both our Father and a Father to the fatherless, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen 

40 Day Prayer Guide for Orphan Care

Over the next 40 days leading up to Orphan Sunday, I will be praying for orphan care.  Many times people get scared or uncomfortable when you talk orphan.  They're afraid of what it will mean to them personally. They wonder if they'll be called to adopt.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But one thing is clear, God's heart is for the orphan.  Many times in the bible He speaks of the least of these, the orphan.  One of the better known scriptures on it is James 1:27--"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  He also promises to not leave us as orphans (John 14:18).  And He sets the lonely in families.  (Psalm 68:6)  What orphan care will look like for each person and family is different.  The important thing is to value the things that God values, and God values the orphan.  

Please join me over the next 40 days in praying for Orphan Care.  Prayer changes everything.  And praying together is powerful.  In the words of Jesus:

"When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I'll be there."  Don't you love that--"My Father in heaven goes into action."  What a beautiful picture.




The prayer guide is used with permission from Orphan Sunday.