Pastoral Prayer by Paul Meeks #9
Our gracious and loving
Heavenly Father, we come to you today in the name of Jesus. Thank you for
giving your only begotten Son that we could be saved. Thank you for the
power of the Gospel; it is the
power of God unto salvation. We acknowledge that we are blessed beyond
measure and we want to give you thanks. We have lots of food at home and
we have different sets of clothes to wear and we have a roof over our heads and
a place to sleep and that makes us richer than 75% of this world. We’ve
never had to experience the agony of torture or the loneliness of imprisonment
for our faith and we’ve never had to suffer the pangs of starvation so we’re
far ahead of millions of our fellowmen around the world. We came here
this morning without fear of harassment or arrest or even torture or death, so
we’re the envy of literally billions of people. Help us, Lord, not to be
forgetful or even unaware of these and many other blessings we enjoy.
Help us not forget to give you our thanks and praise. We have so much to
thank you for. We are so blessed, and we don’t know why we are privileged.
Accept our thanks today.
We pray for our country today
and thank you for the privilege of living here. It’s still the best place
in the world to live, and we would say, God bless
We pray for our own
communities where we live and work and for the thousands of people that we have
contact with every day. May the Spirit of Christ be seen in us even in
situations when we are not even aware that we’re being watched.
We pray for the many teachers
who are beginning a new year with new students and new responsibilities.
They need wisdom and understanding. Make them witnesses of your grace day
after day as they interact with their students.
We pray for the hundreds of
students that will be coming to IWU and Taylor in just a few days. We’re
thankful that we have the opportunity to minister to hundreds of them and we
want to be faithful to that charge.
We pray for our church and
many decisions and plans that are being made. We need divine wisdom and
direction, so we pray for our staff and the leaders of our church. Help
us to be the kind of church that you want us to be.
We pray for the one that will
bring the message in just a few minutes. We pray for your anointing on
him and on us as we hear your word for us through him.
We pray in the name of
Jesus. Amen.
Paul Meeks