Beginning 2025 Centred on God with the New Year’s Sunrise Prayer Relay
Since 2016, the Canberra Declaration has been supporting and promoting the New Year’s Day Sunrise Prayer Relay. Next year is now only five days away!
We believe there’s no greater way to begin 2025 than to put God first through prayer! Psalm 105:4 encourages us to “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.”
Lamentations 3:22–24 teaches us, “Because of the Lord’s faithful love, we do not perish, for his mercies never end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness! I say, “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him.”
If the Lord’s mercies are new every morning, they are certainly new at the dawn of a new year! Watch as Warwick Marsh and Pat Steele explain the New Year’s Day Prayer Relay below!
What started from humble beginnings in 2016 has now grown to people in thousands of locations in over 70 countries. Taking part in the Sunrise Prayer Relay is incredibly easy but hugely beneficial. No wonder it is catching on!
The Canberra Declaration continues to call the Church to a greater, humble reliance on God through prayer. The Sunrise Prayer Relay is a wonderful opportunity to set the spiritual tone for the coming year and centre ourselves on what’s truly important.
In John 17:22–23, Jesus prays for the unity of believers. He desires that:
“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
Jesus desires the unity of believers so that the world may know that the Father sent the Son and loves believers. How? Because the world will recognise the Spirit of unity at work in the Christian community. The love among believers doesn’t originate from within themselves – it comes from God.
What a wonderful way to pray in the new year, by praying the same prayer of Jesus in John 17:22–23!
Hear testimonies from those who’ve been involved in the Sunrise Prayer Relay and discover more about it in the video below!
Participating in the Sunrise Prayer Relay is incredibly easy. Simply choose a public location like a hill, lookout, bridge, public landmark or church in your city or town, and meet with other believers at sunrise on 1 January to pray in the New Year. You can also pray privately in your home.
We also strongly encourage groups to have communion together. This makes for a synchronised prayer event proclaiming the victory of Jesus’ death and resurrection across the world! Praise and worship can also make your time of prayer more powerful.
Please pass this information on to your friends and church and prayer networks. Let’s see prayer grow across our nation!
Register your involvement and receive prayer resources and updates by clicking the green button below.
Yours for revival and transformation in our nation and the nations in 2025,
Samuel Hartwich and Warwick Marsh
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Thanks for this encouragement again ! I’m looking into gathering a group at my church again :))
Just noticed something : since this prayer relay began in 2016 our world seems to have stepped up the anti-God attitudes, behaviours and persecutions, such as approval of SSM in 2017; legislating FOR deconstruction of biological sexual differences; legislating AGAINST God-given freedoms such as freedom of thought, speech and religious expression & practice, and family autonomy freedoms; to name only a few.
Looks like spiritual warfare has overtly sharpened since 2016, though it was always simmering before that.
The birds hiding in the bushes are being flushed out into the open where we can take proper aim at them.
Good reason for us to be thoroughly equipped to demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God … 2 Cor 10 : 5
also 2 Tim 3 : 16 & 17
Oh – just an addendum to diffuse any thoughts that I’m suggesting attacking anyone for their beliefs … it’s the ARGUMENTS and PRETENSIONS that are to be demonised, NOT the people adhering to them :))
oops.. to be DEMOLISHED, not demonised :))
Dear Pauline we have been going backwards in our culture since the 50s or before. Sadly what we are witnessing is an exponential and acceleration of evil!!!!!
Indeed ! There is a time for everything under the sun.
How blessed are we Christians to actually ‘know’ who wins this titanic war, and to be on His side !l