Prayer against loneliness and distractions.

Jesus, I pray that you would protect us from loneliness this year. It is painful to be among a lot of people and to feel alone. Lord, I pray that we would be able to make good, meaningful friendships, connect in a deep way with other people. When people blow us off, protect us from the sting of rejection. Help us to find our security in you. Lord Jesus, we're obviously going to be studying hard. Help us. Help us to wipe out the distractions to develop the mind you've given us. Thank you, Lord God, the founders of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale were committed followers of you. Help us, dear, to clear of the lie that faith in Christ leads to intellectual naivety, to intellectual laziness, and not wanting to study. Lord God, you call us to study, to work, to develop the minds that you've given us so that we might serve you by serving others more efficiently and more effectively. Help us to study well this year. Lord, I especially pray for those who are starting high school, graduating, moving on to college, or starting a new job. Those with major stress disorder or bipolar, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, those whose parents just had a divorce. Those who are really going through it right now in an intense kind of way. I pray for healing and also just the ability to fight through a lot of that pain, to get through it. We thank you, Jesus, that you are the ultimate healer and counselor. No other God comes even close, Lord, especially in those categories. Thank you that you are the only God that is true, that is real, that promises a hope and a future for us. I pray for those who have social anxiety, that they might be able to take small steps, however small, in order to reach out to other people and then they might be accepted by good, strong friends who really care about them because we know, Lord, loneliness is a great epidemic in our nation today that leads to so many different issues. We thank you, Lord, that you said it's not good for man and woman to be alone. So I pray for friendship, for a lonely person or a more gregarious type, that those would be healthy friendships in this new coming year. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.