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Each day during the fast, there will be a set prayer focus in addition to our personal prayers. 

Today our prayer focus is the Next Generation.

We are asking you to pray for our kids, youth, and young adults specifically. 

  • Identity and Worth (Psalm 139:13-14)
  • Wisdom and Discernment to know & recognize truth. (Romans 12:2)
  • Courage and Integrity to do the right thing even if they are standing alone. (1 Timothy 4:12)
  • Protection from harm, addiction, and bad influences. (Psalm 91:3)
  • Discover their purpose. (Ephesians 2:10)

An encouragement from Pastor Hayes:

Psalm 35:1,13

1 Contend, Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me.

13 Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth and humbled myself with fasting.

Have you ever felt like the whole world was conspiring against you? Or maybe it felt like just one part of the world was. Perhaps it was even a single person who seemed determined to damage, defeat, or destroy you. David felt that way—and in his case, it wasn’t just a feeling. It was true.

Many people assume that until Bathsheba, David’s reign was charmed and trouble-free. But that simply isn’t the case. David faced constant challenges to his authority and his reputation. While most of the kingdom loved him, there were always a few who did not. There always are.

When David wrote Psalm 35, it appears that the attacks of those few were weighing heavily on him. He cries out to the Lord in his distress. He asks that his enemies be disgraced and put to shame, that ruin would overtake them, and that they would fall into the very pit they had dug for him. And in doing so, the psalm reveals something else as well—it reveals the bitterness David carried in his heart toward them.

Samuel once told King Saul that God had sought out a man after His own heart. From that statement, we sometimes make the mistake of believing that David was somehow sinless or spiritually untouchable. But the apostle Paul reminds us in Romans that “there is no one righteous, not even one.” And when we read David’s story honestly, we inevitably come to Bathsheba.

Sin rarely appears out of nowhere. It grows. It compounds. And it may be that the bitterness David allowed to linger in his heart dulled his spiritual sensitivity. When temptation presented itself, his grip on righteousness loosened. A heart weighed down by unresolved bitterness is far more vulnerable than we care to admit. Today, surrender all of your burdens and bitterness to the Lord.