Matthew 6:10
“…your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Greetings in Jesus! For the past month, Ottawa UBF has focused on prayer. For four weeks in January we studied four lessons on the theme of prayer: (1) Mark 10:20-25 “Faith that Prays”; (2) Luke 22:39-46 “Jesus’ Earnest Prayer”; (3) Luke 18:1-14 “The Power of Persistent Prayer”; and (4) Matthew 7:1-29 “Ask, Seek, Knock”. Through these Bible studies, we learned many aspects about prayer. In order to put what we learned into practice, we held biweekly prayer nights where all our coworkers and student leaders knelt down and prayed aloud together for two hours after the Friday student meeting.
To conclude the month-long series on prayer, we held a Prayer Symposium at Carleton University on January 31 from 10 am to 1:30 pm. A total of 17 people attended the Prayer Symposium, which consisted of a Group Bible study on the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-15 led by Ian Mui followed by a message delivered by Joshua Brinkerhoff. We learned that we must pray for God’s kingdom—which means God’s rule—to come in our personal lives, in our Bible students, in our campus, in our city, and in our nation. After that, we must pray and depend on God for our daily needs. Through studying the Lord’s prayer, we accepted Jesus’ command to pray, “Father…your kingdom come” so that Ottawa may become a spiritual capital city of Canada.
After the worship service, seven presentations were given by growing student leaders. Each presentation focussed on a warrior of prayer from the Bible or from Christian history, describing who the prayer warrior was, what his or her prayer was, and what the presenter learned from studying about him or her. The presentations were “Esther’s prayer” by Marlyn (2nd year English), “George Müller’s prayer” by Michelle, “King David’s prayer” by Jarrod (3rd year Policy), “Hannah’s prayer” by Heloise (graduate, Psychology), “King Solomon’s prayer” by Aneesh (Masters, Engineering), “St. Monica’s prayer” by Dana, and “Daniel’s prayer” by Ian. Each presenter studied the relevant Bible passages or biographies and wrote several drafts of the presentation in order to deeply understand and learn from the prayers of great prayer warriors in history. We thank God for helping each person to learn about the prayers of great men and women of prayer and make one personal application through their presentation.
Following the worship service, a world mission offering was collected for Haiti relief. And of course, after the symposium we enjoyed delicious and joyful lunch fellowship prepared by the University of Ottawa team. We deeply thank God for beginning to teach us about prayer through our month-long prayer series and through blessing our Prayer Symposium. We pray that 2010 may be a year of prayer in Ottawa ministry and we may experience God’s power through prayer this year. Please continually partner with us in praying for Ottawa to be a spiritual capital city of Canada. God’s kingdom may come in five Ottawa campuses as it is in heaven!
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