July 3 – This week’s prayer’s focus on The Sacred:

Father, those words of Paul in 1 Corinthians about Your body, the Church, being Your temple indwelt by the Holy Spirit (3:16-17), and of individual believer’s bodies being His temple (6:12-20), are so challenging.

Your divine, Holy Spirit indwells Your people and Your Church. It is the Spirit who makes us holy, we are Your temple. Our churches and bodies therefore are both to be considered sacred – owned by You. This is an immense calling as it separates us from the world, its values and sin, and calls us to live with a daily awareness of Your presence in us.

Jesus paid the price in order to redeem us, and is our Lord and Master. May this awareness that our new standing in Christ is derived from the Spirit, inspire us to challenge and renew our thinking on whom we are, and what we can do each and every day to honour our Saviour by how we live and treat our bodies.

We pray that the way we worship, view Your Church, and each other in Christ – will be honouring to Christ. Amen

July 4 – Father, in seeking to better understand what it means to be indwelt by Your Spirit, by His sacred presence, grant us insight and revelation by Your word and Spirit.

Inside the Temple in Jerusalem, a sacred space, it was the Temple altar that made the offering holy – not the offering which made the altar holy. As we consider this in relation to our offering of spiritual sacrifices – such as praise, thanksgiving, giving, prayer, witnessing to Christ and practising our faith by what we do, say and think – lead us deeper into Your Spirit’s fullness in us who is the sacred in us.

Lord, as we offer ourselves, our talents, time, treasure, and our gifts spiritual and natural, may these offerings be accepted as holy and acceptable in Your sight. Give mercy, grace, Your power and riches in glory to us in response to these offerings.

In the Temple, Your presence dwelt above the Mercy Seat in the Most Holy place – the Holy of Holies. In us, Your Spirit dwells and therefore we must view our bodies as set aside for You – we ask that this will indeed be the reality for each one of us. In Jesus’ name. Amen

July 5 – Father, as Your presence dwelt in the Holy of Holies inside the Temple, it meant that the High Priest had to enter and approach that space, with the Ark of the Covenant and Mercy Seat in it, in the designated way. If he did not come with an offering for His own sin and for the people’s sin – You rejected His ministry and could destroy him. 

As we reflect upon this truth today: 1. Thank You that our Lord Jesus is the perfect High Priest whose offering was made once and for all to remove the barrier of our sin hindering us approaching Your holy throne in heaven;

2. His ministry is continual and effective precisely because He does not have to leave the throne or Mercy Seat of heaven – He is the divine priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek;

3. We can have confidence that because of His blood and effective ministry, we can also dwell in Your presence and there engage with You on Your terms;

4. We can bring Christ glory by how we live, worship, serve and witness;

5. Your Holy Spirit has come to enable us to live and minister aright. We declare these truths today, and seek to stand upon them in faith – even when the enemy throws things against us or seeks to overpower us – Your Spirit is greater. We stand on this great truth. In Jesus’ name. Amen

July 6 – Father, as we reflect further on the impact of the Sacred Spirit on our bodies, not that they are sacred in themselves, but are sacred because of the Holy Spirit who dwells within the Church and within individual believers, we are humbled by this truth.

Therefore, as Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, our identity, who we are in Christ, and our lifestyle, what we do, are intrinsically or fundamentally linked. Through our union with Christ by the Spirit, others can come into contact with the Holy in us as we live in faith, obedience loving You, and each other as ourselves.

We pray for the outworking of our new nature in Christ through Your presence in our bodies by our conduct, words and attitudes to life. May we live and declare our Christian faith in full assurance of our union with Christ, and by the power of the indwelling Spirit. In Jesus’ name. Amen

July 7 – Father, our bodies are ‘for the Lord’ not for ‘self-gratification’ (6:13). Our conduct, including the setting for sex – which should be only within biblical, heterosexual marriage – then has a huge impact upon our spiritual state.

Thank You that You have remade us so that our souls are being renewed in Christ, that which links us to our humanity, our spirits are made alive in Christ, that which connects us to You, and our bodies are being brought into submission to the Holy Spirit within, what connects us to the natural Creation around us.

We are intrinsically or fundamentally whole in Christ, spirit, soul and body being brought under His Lordship and Kingship.

We pray for the strengthening of our understanding of this great truth. If I sin sexually by having sex before marriage, or sex with another outside of the bonds of marriage, or by allowing my fantasy life to be unsanctified leading me to think of or look at another sexually, or by watching pornography – then I am sinning against my spirit, soul and body standing in the place where I need Your loving, but challenging, Discipline.

1 Corinthians 3:16-17, TPT, ‘Don’t you realize that together you have become God’s inner sanctuary and that the Spirit of God makes his permanent home in you?  17Now, if someone desecrates God’s inner sanctuary, God will desecrate him, for God’s inner sanctuary is holy, and that is exactly who you are.’

Lord, this tells me that I risk loss, even the loss of that which I hold to be good and true in my life. You would allow this loss to take place as a tool to chasten or discipline me, and bring me, in humility, to a place of repentance, and eventually to right, Christ-honouring conduct.

Lord, I renounce and repent of any wrong thinking, actions or emotions in this area; forgive and cleanse me, and renew me I pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen

July 8 – Father, as a group go to Cefn Lea today – as the theme is Refreshed in Jesus, may this be a weekend of refreshing in and by the Spirit. Bless the fellowship, rest and time together.

As we consider the theme of The sacred this week in our prayers, including that my body is being made holy by the indwelling Spirit – how I treat my body is important. I have a personal responsibility to treat it well, live in a place of Rest in the Lord, and feed and exercise it with due care and attention.

Satan always wants to invade and destroy the sacred places; he cannot overcome the Spirit within me and in Your Church, but he certainly can seek to gain the upper hand over my body.

Equip me to carefully reflect upon what I am feeding my body, how I am treating it, and how I am caring for it in order to dislodge any foothold Satan may have in it. May the way I treat my body honour Christ. In His name and for His glory. Amen

July 9 – Father, this week I have been prayerfully reflecting on the unity of my body, soul and spirit, and on the fact that I am indwelt by Your Holy Spirit – help me to take this seriously and seek to address any issues that have arisen as a result.

If You have challenged my thinking about my own body, what I feed it, how I exercise and treat, care and live in it – I ask for Your grace and understanding to strengthen my body, soul and spirit.

As I finish, I consider the corporate body, our Church. What has been said about my own body equally applies to the church. It is a holy place because of Your Spirit’s indwelling. Help me to treat it with the respect and the dignity it deserves. In Jesus’ name. Amen