Father,
You are our provider in all things and the only one who can bring about fruit from barren things. Please do so in our hearts this year. Like a patient gardener, you dug around the roots of your people, cultivating and fertilising in the anticipation of fruit. For so long we produced nothing but more pride, envy, lust, anger, bitterness and unbelief. But Father, we now rejoice at the blossoming and budding of faith that has appeared through Christ, who died like a seed in the ground, then shooting up to bring life at long last. Lord, may your Spirit well up in us and revitalise our hearts bringing maturity and the fruits of righteousness. Dig through all hardness and enrich us with your word. May it be so in my heart for your glory and for the benefit of those I serve this year in Cairns and beyond.
Amen