Introduction: Prayer Week - 28th June to 4th July 2026

Prayer is central to all we do at Chosen: we must battle together to ensure that it always remains so. After all, it’s how we started all those years ago in 2017. We prayed for three years before we embarked upon any form of frontline work. Today, we have a wonderfully faithful team of intercessors who pray for everything we do: outreach, Drop-In, prison visits, support for our women and so on. Their prayers are pivotal in allowing God’s will to be released into every aspect of our work.  We must persevere in prayer, and in accordance with Jesus’ guidance. That is why we will be using the Lord’s Prayer as our guide and inspiration for our prayer week.

2025 was full of surprising answers to our prayer: Grace walked free from addiction, exploitation and into the arms of Jesus, we had generous donations for our new Drop-In, we completed the main refurbishments we wanted in our facility, we established stronger links with other agencies, and we added four new frontline volunteers.  We praise God for all this.

Who knows what the Holy Spirit will do in the next 12 months as we pray together?

2026 has started encouragingly: we have welcomed our first guests to our refurbished Drop-In space, Grace is still in contact with us, we have doubled the teams on walking outreach and we are contemplating many changes to how we reach and support our women.  For instance, we are looking to serve our women more consistently, more closely and even more meaningfully. This is the year we have re-opened our Daytime Drop-In.  Drop-In is important so we can serve the women more intentionally, get to know them better, signpost them into new lifestyles free from exploitation and abuse, and allow them to experience the fulness and reality of Jesus’ immense love. We have also increased our support for exploited women in prison.

Of course, for these engagements to bear fruit, we must pray. We cannot do this work in our own strength. However, with the Lord’s help, anything is possible (Philippians 4:13).

That is why we have a prayer week this summer. Each day has a verse from the Lord’s Prayer to contemplate, reflect upon, give thanks for, and specific prayer points related to it.  Furthermore, each of the women we have met on walking outreach since 2020 is listed (using pseudonyms for confidentiality): around six per day.  We have also special prayer events on the Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday: these are listed overleaf.  We would love to see you at any or all of these: you really would be most welcome.

Let’s continue to pray! 

Richard, CEO, Chosen

Prayer Events

Sunday 28th June, 7:15-8:45am

Prayer and Feasting.  This combines prayer walking around Desborough Road with a breakfast (optional) afterwards at a local café, meeting at 7:15am in the foyer of the King’s Centre, Desborough Road. This particular event is open both to men and women.

Tuesday 30th June, 7:30-8:30pm*

In-person prayer at our Drop-In space on West End Road.

Wednesday 1st July, 10-11:00am

Prayer walking before Drop-In, meeting at the Drop-In on West End Road.

Friday 3rd July, 7:30-9:00pm

Prayer walking around Desborough Road, meeting in the foyer of the King’s Centre, Desborough Road at 07:30pm and finishing with refreshments in the West End Hall at 9:00pm. (We will be joining a King’s Church prayer meeting in its main auditorium for the first half an hour and the last fifteen minutes, and we will receive prayer as a team during these times.)

* You are welcome to stay for the regular, weekly Zoom prayer meeting which starts at 8:30pm and finishes at 9:10pm.

Sunday 28th June*

Our Father in heaven

It is astonishing how God defines himself.  In Psalm 2:6 God declares that he is a father with a son, the latter of whom will rule over nations and the earth.  This is foundational because, as theologian Johns argues, God’s plan for the Church is bound up within the trinitarian nature of the Godhead.  Johns notes that ‘God is a family and community… the always-existing first family.’ Christianity is thus fundamentally a love relationship between a Father and a Son, in which God reveals Himself primarily in family terms.

Furthermore, God identifies and defines us using family-based terminology.  For instance, in Exodus 3:6, he declares to Moses at the burning bush that he is the “God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”  Families matter profoundly to God, and God’s fatherhood of us is foundational to our understanding of him and of one another.  We are God’s sons and daughters, alongside other sons and daughters: we rejoice because we are adopted by God into his family with profoundly rich spiritual ties. The depth of these bonds can surpass even those in biological families because they are threaded together by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Reflection

How does being a son or a daughter of the living God affect how you think and live?

Who are your significant brothers, sisters and spiritual parents in the Church?

How might God’s loving fatherhood redefine how the women we serve in Chosen see themselves and others?

Thanksgiving

Thank Jesus for placing you into his family, the church, alongside other spiritual brothers and sisters.

Thank the Father for the depth of his love revealed through his Son Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Thank God that he is in heaven eager to prepare a unique place for each one of us (John 14:2), and is aching for the women we serve in Chosen to join us, (2 Peter 3:9).

Prayer

Pray that the women we serve would know their heavenly Father and they would be comforted by the depth of his love, and that Jesus would be revealed to them as the Son of God, their Lord and Saviour.

Pray that God’s identity would be revealed to the women as we engage on walking outreach, at our new Drop-In, as we advocate for the women with other agencies, and as we meet with them for coffee/tea/socially.

Pray that the women we serve get regular ‘tastes’ of heaven on outreach, at Drop-In and as we come alongside them.

Our women

Please pray for salvation, healing, strength, deliverance and new lives for our women:

Abigail, Alana, Alison, Amanda, Amey, Andrea.

*Prayer and Feasting.  This morning we have Prayer and Feasting which combines prayer walking around Desborough Road with a breakfast (optional) afterwards at a local café, meeting at 7:15am in the foyer of the King’s Centre, Desborough Road.

Monday 29th June

Hallowed be your name.

There is no-one like God.  His name is above every other name, (Philippians 2:9-11).  His treatment of us defies description too: he is full to bursting with grace and truth (John 1: 14).  This is because he is holy: set apart, different, glorious to an extent we cannot fully apprehend.  Furthermore, he is gloriously loving and unerringly right.  In Psalm 145, David declares what God is like and how he treats those who approach him.

17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways
and loving toward all he has made.
18 The LORD is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.
19 He fulfils the desires of those who fear him;
he hears their cry and saves them.

What a comfort it is to know that God is righteous always: there is no sin, darkness or fallibility in him whatsoever.  Furthermore, he overflows with love towards all whom he wisely and carefully creates.  We are crafted by his holy hand for relationship with him and to experience personally his love and care.  Sin, sex work, indifference and every barrier are overcome when we call on him, because he hears our cry in order to save us.

Reflection

How do you experience God’s righteousness and love towards you?

How does God’s nearness to you affect your love for him and for others?

How does God’s desire to hear the cry of the afflicted and save them shape how you pray for the women we reach and your expectation of his salvation for them?

Thanksgiving

Thank God that he is always entirely holy, glorious, righteous, generous and faithful – in other words, like no-one else we will ever meet.

Thank God for Grace who came to know and trust Jesus in 2025, and who has a new future full of hope and expectation with restored relationships with her family.

Thank God that he wants to save more women whose lives will never be the same.

Prayer

Pray that all of us in Chosen would worship the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always acknowledging their holiness and faithfulness.

Pray that he would display his holiness to our women enabling them to walk free from lives of control, brokenness and addiction and into righteousness and wholeness.

Pray that his distinctive and holy presence through the Holy Spirit would be evident whenever we meet the women: on outreach, Drop-In, as we advocate for them.

Our women

Please pray for salvation, healing, strength, deliverance and new lives for our women:

Angelina, Anna, Beth, Carmel, Damaris, Deborah.

Tuesday 30th June*

your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus aches for God’s kingdom to be manifest on earth, and for God’s creation to align with his will.  What does God’s kingdom look like as it gloriously permeates our lives on earth?

We get a clear glimpse of this through the way Jesus lived.  His life did not occasionally leak a little of God’s concern.  Instead, it was a torrent of love, generosity, restoration and healing.  Of the 1,257 narrative verses in the four gospels, 484 verses or over 38 percent are devoted to describing Jesus' healing miracles.  Remarkably, the most common activity reported about Jesus in the Gospels is not preaching,  nor rebuking the Pharisees or his wayward disciples: on the contrary, it is healing.  Healing and the restoration and comfort of sinful people form the centrepiece of Jesus’ entire ministry.  He loves pouring out undeserved favour and restoring broken people.  Whether it is lepers cast out from society (Matthew 8:2), or a demonised man shunned by his community (Mark 5:9), or restoration the ear of a man who was part of a plot to murder him (Luke 22:51), Jesus’ priority was characterised by healing.  Healing is a sign and foretaste of the restorative nature of God’s wonderful kingdom in which sinful people are transformed into renewed creations free from afflictions, illnesses, oppression and sin which hitherto marred them.

Reflection

How has your life been transformed by Jesus’ healing power and love?

How does Jesus’ healing power shape your view of your own future – in this life and the one to come?

How might Jesus heal the lovely women we serve, and how does this reveal his heart towards them?

Thanksgiving

Praise Jesus for the healing you have experienced.

Let us again give thanks for Grace who walked free last year from the most vile coercion, oppression, addiction, homelessness and control.

Let us praise Jesus for his glorious desire to set more women free.

Prayer

Let us plead for greater healing anointing and boldness on walking outreach and in our Drop-In to see women instantly delivered from drug and alcohol addiction, trauma and shame.

That our Drop-In would be a place where God’s kingdom breaks into our lives and the lives of our women in the most surprising and powerful ways and that God’s love would be tangible, that he would perform miracles to set women free from sickness, addiction and control.

That God’s kingdom would come through salvation of our women: that we would be able to run Alpha with our women by the end of this year and that a woman would be baptized this year because of the in-breaking love of Jesus into her life.

Our women

Please pray for salvation, healing, strength, deliverance and new lives for our women:

Edna, Eleanor, Elsie, Emily, Erica, Esther.

* Tonight at we are hosting in-person prayer at our Drop-In space on West End Road. It will start at 7:30pm, finishing at 8:30pm. Afterwards , you are welcome to stay for the regular, weekly Zoom prayer meeting which starts at 8:30pm and finishes at 9:10pm

Wednesday 1st July*

Give us today our daily bread.

How I ache to eat warm, fresh bread.  For many people, bread is a staple food, an item that is so common that it can go underappreciated and somewhat taken for granted.  I used to.  However, I cannot eat regular bread because of a gluten intolerance.  How I miss the joys of fresh gluten-filled bread – be that wholemeal, a white bloomer, a fresh baguette.  Gluten free alternatives seem counterfeit, and they often taste more like cardboard than ciabatta: a pale and inadequate imitation of the real thing no matter how hard bakers try to make them palatable.  Bread is a necessary joy.  Jesus ate it, fed others with it, and broke it.  It is important: it nourishes, satisfies and sustains life.  We are told to pray for it daily.

Jesus says in John 6:35 that he is the bread of life and that whoever comes to him will never go hungry.  This is because he is the author, sustainer, and giver of true life, life that satisfies the deepest parts of our being.  Coming to him, therefore, imparts new life and brings a fulfilment that cannot be found in any alternative.  He is no gluten-free substitute: he is the real deal and we need to feed from him.

Reflection

Which bread is your favourite and why?

What would life be like for you without Jesus feeding, nourishing and sustaining you?

What does Jesus’ nourishment of our women look like, and how much does he want to feed, sustain and satisfy the true desires and needs of our women?

Thanksgiving

Thank Jesus for his new life and profound love for you.  Thank him again.  And then again.

Let us give thanks for our wonderful bakers whose delicious creations honour and value our women (who often track us down because of our cakes).

Thank Jesus that he loves our women so profoundly that his own body was broken for them to walk free and into new life.

Prayer

That Jesus, our bread of life, would be central in everything we do, and that he would be glorified in Chosen, and that he would show up in surprising places and in surprising ways that cause us to worship and adore his work.

That he would feed hope, life and salvation to the women we serve.

That the fragrance of Christ would draw the women to us on outreach, in the Drop-In and when we visit them in prison.

Our women

Please pray for salvation, healing, strength, deliverance and new lives for our women:

Evelyn, Grace, Hannah, Harriet, Hayley, Holly.

* You are welcome to join us for prayer walking before Drop-In, meeting at the Drop-In on West End Road at 10:00am and returning at 11:00am.

Thursday 2nd July

Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.

The Apostle Paul starkly informs the first century believers in Ephesus that, prior to their faith in Jesus, each one of them had previously been stone-cold dead because of their transgressions and sins against God.  We were just like these early disciples: incapable of receiving God’s favour, love and nature.  Our condition was so piteous that our very nature, the essence of who we are, was only good for receiving God’s wrath and judgment.  This is a very sobering and miserable assessment indeed: Ephesians 2:1-3.

However, God’s love for us exceeded our grievous sinfulness – so much so that he made us alive with Jesus and transformed our lives through his infinite and unearned grace, v. 4.  What good news we embody, how glorious is God’s tenderness we carry with us, and how uncontainable is the joy of God’s love and salvation.  These are only possible because the debt of our sin has been cancelled by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, v. 8.  We are wonderfully forgiven people.

Jesus’ prayer for us is that we remind ourselves daily of how forgiven we are, and how important it is that we mirror God’s pro-active and costly forgiveness to everyone we meet and have ever met.  Neil Bartlett, the former leader of the King’s Church High Wycombe, once wisely counselled that every Christian must be ruthless in one particular area of life: forgiveness.  We must learn to forgive ruthlessly.  Why? Because Jesus did, and he tells us to copy him.  It is how to become free, remain free and see others become free.  It is the most Jesus-like thing we can do this side of his return.

And yet how difficult it can be to forgive: not just others, but ourselves.  We often hear the women tell us that their sin is too profound for them to receive God’s love.  It is as though the depth and dirt of their transgressions obliterate any qualification for God’s forgiveness.  Wonderfully, this is not how God sees them.  Rahab, the prostitute in Jericho (Joshua 2) is part of Jesus’ lineage, powerfully proclaimed  without shame, hesitation or qualification in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus Christ (Matthew 1).  Furthermore, her faith is commended in Hebrews 11:31 along with spiritual giants of the Old Testament such as Abraham, Moses and David.  God’s grace overwhelms the most shameful sin, and his love can obliterate all condemnation, whether that comes from others or ourselves.

Reflection

Which sins of yours do you consider unforgiveable or too shameful for God to overlook?  What do you believe Jesus wants you to think in future about these?

Whom do you struggle to forgive, and why?

How might the love of Jesus redefine how our women see themselves, others and the painful histories they have endured?

Thanksgiving

Give thanks that you are eternally forgiven by the King of Heaven.

Thank the Holy Spirit that he has given you the power and incentive to forgive yourself and others.

Our women can become contemporary ‘Rahabs’ and daughters of Christ, walking free for eternity.

Prayer

Name those who have hurt you, and why.  Ask for the Holy Spirit’s power to forgive them.   Be ruthless: forgive them from your heart.

That our women would not see themselves as unforgiveable, but would experience the powerful love, deliverance and forgiveness of Jesus.

That our women would be able to forgive themselves and those who have failed them, abused them and raped them.

Our women

Please pray for salvation, healing, strength, deliverance and new lives for our women:

Joy, Judith, Leah, Leela, Lily, Martha.

Friday 3rd July*

And lead us not into temptation

The power of temptation can be overwhelming: each one of us has our own specific areas of weakness where we can succumb to doing things we know to be wrong.  Jesus was different.  Despite the most profound targeted temptation, temptation cunningly devised by Satan himself, Jesus overcame (Matthew 4).  Jesus used the word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to triumph.  Wonderfully, we have access to the same equipment as Jesus.  Peter reminds us of this when he tells believers that God’s ‘divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness… [so we] can participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption [of evil desires],’ (2 Peter 3-4).  Wow!  Nothing has been overlooked by God in enabling us to live like Jesus.

So powerful is God’s Spirit that long-term temptations can dissolve in his presence.  Baptism can be a powerful step for many in this process.  For example, I have heard testimonies of deeply entrenched addictions being cleansed during baptism.  One man told me that he had chain smoked for years, but once he was baptised, all temptation to do so went up in smoke.  In fact, his wife commented a week after his baptism that he had not smoked a single cigarette.  He hadn’t noticed, or even given smoking a single thought, so powerful was his deliverance.  Of course, other sins may not so easily fade.  Nonetheless, we still have everything we need for life and godliness.  Phew!

Reflection

Which temptations or habits has the Holy Spirit helped you overcome in your life: did you even notice at first?

Which blessings did the Holy Spirit give you instead of these temptations?

How will the lives of our women be changed when Jesus delivers them from the temptations of addiction, control and hurt?

Thanksgiving

Praise Jesus that you have every single thing you need to live a life of godliness, and that you have the same equipment as he had!

Grace has left sex work and she can live a brand new life with the strength and encouragement of the Holy Spirit.

Other women will join Grace in leaving addiction, homelessness, sexual exploitation and shame.

Prayer

That you would continue to overcome temptation in the power of the Holy Spirit and fortified by the Word of God.

That the staff and volunteer team at Chosen would be shielded from temptation and distraction so we glorify Jesus instead.

That we would see the women baptised in water and the Holy Spirit so they leave behind their old lives and old selves.

Our women

Please pray for salvation, healing, strength, deliverance and new lives for our women:

Naomi, Olivia, Rose, Ruby, Yasmine, Yolande.

* We will be prayer walking around Desborough Road, meeting in the foyer of the King’s Centre, Desborough Road at 07:30pm and finishing with refreshments in the West End Hall at 9:00pm. (We will be joining a King’s Church prayer meeting in its main auditorium for the first half an hour and the last fifteen minutes, and we will receive prayer as a team during these times.)

Saturday 4th July

but deliver us from the evil one.’

The evil one is just that: evil.  Our women are exposed daily to some of the most evil treatment imaginable: abuse, condemnation, violence, rape, exploitation, humiliation, theft, control.  Their children are taken off them by the state, they live in torment thinking about them and wondering what could be, or could have been.  The enemy, Peter reminds us, prowls like a roaring lion, seeking to devour, destroy and demean God’s image in all of us, (1 Peter 5:8).  No wonder Jesus encourages us to plead for deliverance from such destruction.  The good news is that someone more powerful than the evil one has the love, power and wisdom to deliver us.  He loves to do so for us.  He loves to do so for the women we serve.

Reflection

How did Jesus save you from eternal destruction and the evil one, and how does this change your outlook on your life?

Which of our women might he deliver in the next 12 months out of abuse, addiction and exploitation, and what might this look like?

How would it feel to be set free from the evils of sexual exploitation, control and abuse?

Thanksgiving

Give thanks that Jesus is infinitely more powerful than the evil one.

Thank God for our wonderful prayer team who cover us every week in prayer, delivering us from the vileness of the evil one.

Jesus has great plans for the women we serve.

Prayer

That the Holy Spirit would shield us from buyers, controllers, dealers as we reach out to the women.

Unity in every aspect of Chosen’s ministry: closeness in our teams, a common approach to loving and signposting the women, protection for the trustees who oversee the charity.

The women would experience the immensity of Jesus’ love and live free from the destructive patterns of the evil one.

Our women

Please pray for salvation, healing, strength, deliverance and new lives for our women:

Yulia, Yuliana, Yves, Yvette, Yvonne.