Friends calling for prayer regarding The Episcopal Church and General Convention

I tried to stay away. Really I did. For a week I pretty much have been off the Episcopal and Anglican blogs. I sensed the Lord giving me other priorities in recent months, and that it was not my year or season to make intercession for TEC a major focus in my own life. I’ve let Jill and Torre, both of whom are still within TEC, take the lead in terms of promoting intercessory prayer for GC. And they’ve been doing a great job.

But today my heart is so heavy. It is heavy of course because of the actions The Episcopal Church is taking, such as the overwhelming YES vote to authorize a Same-Sex-Blessings liturgy yesterday by the Episcopal bishops.

Even moreso, however, my heart is heavy for, and I find myself praying for friends like Jill and George+, Torre and Jean, Kendall+, Fr. Rob E.+, Fr. Tim F.+, friends in Central Florida, +Mark Lawrence and the deputation from South Carolina, +Bill Love, Cherie and Todd+ Wetzel, Sarah, Greg and Jackie, and all I know either in person, or via much correspondence via the internet, who are still in TEC trying to stand and cry aloud for Biblical and Gospel Truth – faithfully defending their “little stone bridge” to use a famously apt metaphor coined by Sarah Hey 8 years ago.

Please pray today for all the orthodox at General Convention that the Lord would show them what He requires, that He would encourage and strengthen their hearts, and that they would be faithful and hear His well done at the end, no matter what others around them may say. May Jesus be glorified in and through them today, and may He lift them up.

Some of those calling for prayer, who are either at GC or who are committed to praying for GC include:

Fr. Tim Fountain

The Rev. John Burwell [at GC – deputy from SC]

Mary Ailes

Cherie Wetzel  (at GC, reporting for Anglicans United)

Fr. Dan Martins (at GC, Bishop of Springfield)

Read their posts and cry out to the Lord for all who will have to seek the Lord as to “what next.”

Fr. Tim Fountain, a wonderful cyber friend and former contributor here at L&B, has summed up well some of the key matters for prayer in his post at Stand Firm this morning, which I’ve linked above:

The Epistle in today’s Daily Offices reminds me to pray for all at General Convention.  We all stand in need every moment of every day.  All of us have sins “known and unknown” that separate us from God, and forces of the world, the flesh and the devil assailing us with deceptions of all sorts.  Yet we have Jesus who has overcome those forces and intercedes for us as the constant, perfect offering to our Father in heaven.  We need to join Jesus in his intercession for those at GC, not for unrealistic outcomes, but for any who still understand him as their Savior to be covered by his perfect offering, even in their sins and gullibility to deceptions.  We certainly need to pray for those who don’t believe the Gospel of salvation, that they hear and receive it.

Amen.

– Karen B., Lent & Beyond founder

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Update:  A commenter at SF has linked a short call for prayer (via Facebook) from The Rev. David Thurwell, one of the clergy deputies from the Dio. of  SC.  Read it here.