Welcome to Gateway’s prayer page. We hope it will inspire, challenge and encourage you in your prayer journey. You will also find some prayer suggestions here to help you pray for the wider Gateway family.

Justin Welby’s statement above, contains not only a challenge for us as the Body of Christ to pray but also, within those words lies the truth that our prayers very rarely stand alone but have a ripple out effect far greater than we realize or will ever understand.

Particularly in times of personal difficulty and trial we often find our prayers focusing on our own circumstances - we have all been there - and as much as that’s okay for a season, we need to make a choice not to live in that place. It’s so easy to fall into a habit where our prayers become purely self- focused.  Jesus prayed not only for Himself but also for His disciples and others He met, in an ever-widening circle to include the Church and the world.

Our prayers are what God uses to accomplish His will on the earth for our lives, our families, our church, our communities, our country and our world. That is an amazing fact and a huge responsibility and for some the only way they can get their head around that responsibility is to disassociate themselves totally from it. Resulting in a prayer life that is inward looking, hollow and dull, instead of, outward focused, fulfilling and exciting.

We are all called to pray for our families, our church leadership, our government and those in authority over us - but do we?

God does not expect us to pray for every person and need in the world but He does expect us to pray for some. The needs He calls you to pray for will be different to the ones He calls me to pray for but the challenge for us is to still ourselves long enough to hear His whispers and discover what we are to pray; for what specific people, countries, situations and circumstances. 

This is my challenge to us, that we would look outside of ourselves and take on that extra responsibility in prayer as we are called, or perhaps I could say, commanded to do.

What are the limitations of prayer? How far do its benefits and possibilities reach? What part of God’s dealing with man, and with man’s world, is unaffected by prayer? The answers to these questions will gauge the effort and results of our praying. The answer will greatly enhance the value of prayer, or will greatly depress prayer.

Perhaps a good prayer for some of us to pray is simply that God would give us the desire to pray.  Although the reality is, as disciples of Christ, we are called “to pray whether we feel like it or not - and not allow our feelings to determine our habits of prayer” [E M Bounds]

Perhaps 2024 is a time to reprioritise prayer in our lives, giving God the opportunity to move in our situations and circumstances, our families, our church, our communities, our country and our world.