Pastoral/Congregational Prayer for the Evening Service, 12 May 2013


Jesus encourages us in Luke 11: “I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Luke 11.9-10).

 Let us pray:

Lord God, who practices steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth (Jeremiah 9.24): hear us as we pray for our crazy, mixed up world, where harmless bystanders and students are mowed down in classrooms and malls by gunmen, kidnapped at an early age and held in captivity for years, starved, battered, and robbed. And where governing authorities fund and protect those who abort children, cover for those who traffick in drugs and market human bondage. Bring sanity and judgment to bear, that the peoples of this land and all countries may sleep in peace and live in quietness. Lord, hear our prayer.

 Mighty God, as the Boy Scouts of America vote soon on whether or not to maintain their membership standards, we pray that you would keep them from falling into the trap of craving respectability, corporate approval, and loving money (which is the root of all kinds of evil – 1 Tim. 6.10). Help them to maintain their oath, that they would be honorable, do their duty to God and their country, to obey the Scout Law, help other people at all times; to keep themselves physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight. Lord, hear our prayer.
Father, who knows those who are yours (2 Timothy 2.19); For your people throughout the world, and here in Edmond and Oklahoma City we pray; specifically 1st Baptist of OKC, Beth Haven Baptist, 1st Church of the Nazarene-Bethany, Bethel Congregational Church, Bethesda Assembly of God. May they be filled with your Spirit, guided into all truth, protected from evil, and filled with every good thing that they may faithfully serve you. Lord, hear our prayer.

Great and loving God, we pray for this congregation. Your will for us in Jesus is the peace that the world cannot give (John 16.33); your abiding gift to us is the Helper he promised (John 15.26). Please calm our troubled hearts, dispel every fear, keep us steadfast in love and faithful to your Word that we may always courageously submit to your word and way. Grant this through Jesus Christ, the firstborn from the dead, the faithful witness and ruler of the kings of the earth (Revelation 1.5). Lord, hear our prayer.

Holy God, you who made the eye to see, the ear to hear, and formed us majestically in our mother’s womb, we pray for those in our church fellowship, our friends and our family who are going through gut-wrenching trouble; faced with grief or guilt or tragedy:….show your mighty hand on their behalf, raising them up, turning their suffering into songs of praise, their sorrows into gladness. Lord, hear our prayer.

All of these prayers we offer through Your Son, Jesus Christ, as we now sing:…

Hear our prayer, O Lord, hear our prayer, O Lord; Incline Thine ear to us, & grant us Thy peace. Amen. Trinity Hymnal #728

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