How do we pray for people in Ukraine?

Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.
Psalm 27:14 NLT.

Here's the video 'How Do I Pray?' that goes with this post.

We are frequently presented with the words "Please Wait". Every time you use a card to pay for fuel at the filling station, or stand at the checkout terminal, there’s a delay while the terminal goes online, checks who you are, authorises payment and makes the transfer. Back in the day, you would be waiting while someone counted the money and issued the receipt. A delightfully traditional department store I know used to make you wait while your money, with the till docket, went down a tube in a pneumatic capsule to the remote accounts department, until the change and the receipt arrived back in the same way. Now its all electronic, but there’s a number of transactions going on in the cybersphere. While that is happening, you are presented with the words none of us likes to read: "Please Wait"!

But it’s a sign of things HAPPENING — not inaction.

This rather banal illustration helps us to take a more positive view of waiting for God when we read it in the Bible. At first we read it as God delaying His response. But it would be more correct to understand it as the Bible reminding us that there is a timescale in God's response, and that our waiting is experiencing the time while God is acting – not a pause during inaction .

It's all to do with our perspective. Do we come before God full of confidence that He is hearing us, and that He is for us? Do we approach Him believing that our Father wants us to hear us? And that He wants us to listen to Him, and agree with Him, to be praying in that sense of agreement, so that He can respond?

There's a lie that we may be tempted to believe: that God — who we know has all power — is similar to a slippery politician, who has a measure of power, but is skilled in saying one thing and then justifying doing another, always finding excuses not to deliver. I will not dishonour God at all by mentioning this false comparison, but I will dare to describe the danger we face, too willingly accepting to the false picture the enemy will try to put in our minds, rather than believing the truth and revelation the Holy Spirit gives us.

Don't be trapped by a lie that we are being tempted to believe. Believe and trust the TRUE picture — the Holy Spirit’s testimony:

God has spoken plainly, and I have heard it many times: Power, O God, belongs to You — unfailing love, O Lord, is Yours.
Psalm 62:11

God is strong. God is loving — that is His character, and that is also the basis of our intercession for others.

So as we pray for the people of Ukraine today, we want to align ourselves with Almighty God who is already hearing every prayer of every believer in that land. It is adding our prayers to that worldwide agreement. It is expecting God to do something great in that land — quite possibly something beyond our imagination.

For us, that calls for faith, and it requires determination, and demands a resolve to be actively waiting — waiting on God, attending to Him, listening to everything He says, and seeking to align ourselves and our prayer with what He is saying.

Your prayer, from your heart, is the best prayer, but it may help you to begin by praying along with me:

O God our Father, we thank You that we can come to You in Jesus. We thank You that You delight in hearing us, Your children. And we praise You that Your character is mighty power and unfailing love. Your kingdom come!

We pray for miracles to deliver the people of Ukraine. For missiles to miss and bombs to fail, for aggressors to see their folly and desert. For evil rule to fail, for pride to turn to destruction, for the godly to be rescued from trouble which falls on the wicked instead. For just rule to prevail and Your name be magnified.

May revival spring up out of the dust of destruction, a turning to You in new awareness of Your Son Jesus and His just reign. In whose name we pray. Amen.

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