Lord Jesus,

I join You in Your prayer to the Father that Your children would be one - because, like You, I want the world to believe that the Father sent You. You have said in Your Word that where there is unity, You command a blessing of Life and I want to see that blessing come in full force.

Just as You - the great King of Kings - humbled Yourself by taking the form of a slave, even to the point of choosing to die a humiliating and agonizing death on a cross. I choose to give up my ridiculous pretensions of being in any way righteous or richt in my own strength and I humble myself before You. It's all about You and Your Kingdom, Lord, and not about me.

I choose also to humble myself before my brothers and sisters in Christ and to come to them not just with truth but with grace - just as You come to me. I choose to consider them more important than myself and to put their interests above my own. I recognize that without genuine love, anything I do is no more than a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. Even if my Christian doctrine and tradition are 100 per cent right, without love they are worth precisely nothing.

Lord, I am eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. I therefore ask You to fill me afresh with the Holy Spirit and to lead me in love. I choose to be a peacemaker not a nitpicker. I choose relationship above rules. I choose love above law. I choose to be real rather than right.

Please show me how practically I can serve and bless those You have called to different parts of Your Church.

I pray this in the name of the humble Jesus, the One who has now been lifted up to the very highest place and has the name that is above every other name.

Amen.

Based on Psalm 133, John 1:14-17, John 17:20-23, 1 Corinthians 13, Ephesians 4:1-7, and Philippians 2:1-11