For March’ s Watch & Pray online gathering, we were looking at aspects of God’ s Mercy. This has been our theme during March and to help us in our praying and worshipping, we took an acronym of mercy focussing on some of the names of God:
M Messiah
E Emmanuel
R Redeemer
C Counsellor
Y Yahweh
We found that as we prayed using the different names of God, He revealed fresh truths about who He is and the richness and depth of His mercy in our lives.
In Hebrew, the name for Messiah is Mashiach and means Anointed One and Chosen One – we spent some moments simply honouring Jesus, our coming King and Messiah and thanking Him for His abundant grace, mercy and faithfulness in each of our lives. As we looked at the name Emmanuel, we were drawn to the fact that it is only used in few instances in The Bible – but the simple truth of the meaning of Emmanuel – God with us – recognising that He is with us in all circumstances. We prayed for ourselves, that we learn to live more in the presence of the King, for those who are ‘Churched’ but do not have a personal relationship with Jesus and for those who have turned away from God to receive His glory and beauty.
As we considered the name Redeemer, we declared that WE are part of a Kingdom of redeemed people – and had a very beautiful sense of awesome awareness of that fact. We asked the question: “Do we have faith today, to believe that God can redeem the nations of the UK?” We prayed and called out to God for mercy, we gave thanks for our personal redemption and prayed for family members and for all the nations of the UK – “Lord have mercy and redeem our nations….”
We discovered The Wonder of The Wonderful and The Wisdom of The Counsellor as we focussed on Isaiah 6. We found ourselves concentrating on these attributes of Jesus, Yeshua, Adonai, Emmanuel as we prayed and worshipped together and asked God, as our counsellor to reveal and renew more wisdom and knowledge, in us, in our daily walks.
As we finished our time together, we looked at the name of Yahweh, understanding that in Jewish tradition it is too sacred a name to utter out loud. It is a name with seven meanings:
The Self-Existent, Eternal God
The Relational God
He is with us
The Unchanging God
He Who keeps His Covenant with us
He Who is Full of Mystery
So we simply opened our hands and allowed Yahweh to reveal to us a new and fresh understanding of His deep mercy to us, enabling us and equipping us to share that with others.
It would appear that this time together deeply impacted many people as we have received much encouraging feedback about the Watch & Pray.
Laurence Sharman is the Executive Director of the World Prayer Centre.
