Dear Friends,

There was a supply teacher (whose name I can’t remember) who inspired me to take up music. There was Colin who helped me to enjoy sport. There was Mark and Michael who together inspired me to be a priest. There was Lindsay who taught me how to share my faith. We all need role models, people whose example inspires and encourages us.

And the same is true with prayer. In the Diocese of Blackburn, 2025 is a Year of Prayer for Growth and Renewal, a year when we are committing ourselves to praying regularly and expectantly for the growth of our churches. And fortunately, help is at hand! When you open up your Bible, there are countless role models to help us grow in the life of prayer.

This Lent devotional differs from its predecessors because, rather than working our way through one Book, we are going to explore a range of powerful prayer role models in the scriptures. By using the Diocesan Lent Course, available on the Fruitful app or online, you can go even deeper in helping these wonderful individuals to help you to pray.

Over the next few weeks, we will pray with Hannah whose intense life of personal prayer plays a massive role in God’s plan of salvation. We will pray with Elijah who prayed big and prayed bold and bore courageous witness in his faithfulness to God.

We will pray with Ezekiel whose prayer bore witness to God’s redemptive plan to bring life out of death, and we will pray with Esther who joined her prayer with so many others to save her people from tyranny.

We will pray with Daniel who models for us constancy and persistence in prayer even in times of danger, and we will pray each Sunday with the psalmist whose vivid and honest relationship with God manages to incorporate every aspect of prayer.

Finally we will pray with Jesus as, constantly strengthened by His Father’s presence, He takes up the Cup of Suffering and goes to the cross to set us free.

I hope you find challenge, inspiration, and joy in the journey this year’s Lent Devotional will lead you on. Above I hope that, inspired by so great a cloud of witnesses, your life of prayer grows, and with it, your joy in bearing witness to the God who sets us free in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Yours,

The Rt Revd Philip North, Bishop of Blackburn.