DAY to PRAY letter
January 2025
Welcoming Change
Pastor Carrie Butler | CTK Network Prayer
Faithful Intercessors,
As we enter 2025 and this Day to Pray, I want to share a powerful passage from Romans 12 that I have been dwelling on.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1-2, NIV)
The encouragement from Paul is to be set apart, offering ourselves fully to God - soul, mind and body - so we become more like him, and do the things he did (John 14:12). I don’t know about you, but it’s easy for me to go into a new year thinking “this one will be different!” and by March I’m back to a bad habit or pattern of thinking that doesn’t look much like Jesus. It’s easy to succumb to the pressure of culture to be more, do more, have more, etc. It’s easy to spend more time on my phone than in the Word. It’s easy to stay comfortable, preferring what I know over what is new and more fruitful. But we are urged to let God invade every part of our lives, offering ourselves as a living sacrifice, and this will require something of us. It will require us to change.
Thankfully, we don’t do this alone! God’s Spirit helps us in this transformation journey AND prays for us (that is really good news, my friends!). Earlier in Romans Paul says this:
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. Romans 8:26-27
A new year is another opportunity for us to seek and surrender to God’s good, pleasing and perfect will once again. It is another opportunity to welcome the change that he brings, not resisting it, because we can trust Him to be with us, loving us through the change. And it’s another opportunity to be led by God’s Spirit, who knows the mind of Christ, through the change.
It is a huge encouragement for us on staff at CTK to know that you are praying today, and the request for prayer is simple: Pray that we welcome the change God has for us as we seek to do His will in Whatcom County. You can pray this for each individual on staff (use this link to the staff page to pray this over each person), pray it over our entire body at the Bellingham campus, over the CTK Network including Ferndale, Downtown, Sudden Valley and Blaine campuses, and pray it over Whatcom County. Pray that followers of Jesus would allow God to transform every part of their lives, so we become more like Him, doing what He did. Pray that what we experience will have ripple effects as we share the love of Jesus and the powerful testimonies of change that come from knowing Him, inviting others to experience the same power and love.
It’s an honor to pray with you today, and I pray you encounter Jesus afresh today.
With you in unity,
Carrie
