Pastoral Prayer: AM and PM
Since our Senior Pastor was out on vacation, I preached both services, officiated at communion Sunday morning, and led the pastoral prayer for both services. Below are both of the prayers. They're a little different due to when they come into the service. Feel free to use them as you see fit. I hope these are beneficial to you:
Lord God, for your loving kindness toward us, your merciful care poured out on us, your lifting our hearts from the depths of dark gloom and desperateness, we give you our warmest thanks and most delighted praise!
- Merciful God, you resist the proud but give grace to the humble: help us to trust you utterly, to rest our hope and confidence in you, and to serve you with pure hearts. Keep us from becoming thin and shallow, from praiseless praises, prayerless prayers, and faithless faithfulnesses; cause us to always be thirsty for you, the fountain of living waters; to yearn for you, to become thoroughly awed by you, your power, grace, mercy, love, justice and holiness; and to rejoice more fully in Christ Jesus, your Son our Lord, who is our life and our hope; and grant us repentant hearts that we would turn away, in haste, from our sins and the spirit of the age, to you, our God.
- Lord Jesus, we pray for those who have lost their way, being tangled up in the cares and deceitfulness of this world, as well as those who see no need for you and what you have done…inflame their hearts with love for you, O Christ our God, that loving you above all things and their neighbors as themselves, they may come to glorify you and enjoy you forever.
- Look, most merciful Lord, on those who are sick and worn out by their struggles, hardships, failing health, worries and fears….grant them in the here and now a foretaste of what they will enjoy in the new heavens and new earth, where you will “wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore” (Revelation 21.4).
- We long, O our God, for the earth to be filled with the knowledge of the your glory as the waters cover the sea; to that end we ask for your hand to be upon Flavien, Fikrit, Justin Westmoreland, Daniel Killian, and all the missionaries we support.
- Almighty and everlasting God, we humbly implore you graciously to regard the President of these United States of America, Mr. Obama, his counselors, and all others in authority over us; that they may be high in purpose, wise in counsel, and unwavering in duty; and in the administration of their solemn charge may wholly serve your will, uphold the honor of our Nation, secure the protection of our people, and set forward every righteous cause.
- Great God, omnipotent and omniscient, you see how the nations of this world are in a mess; crooked leaders, chaotic civil strife, rampant disease, extensive destitution. For the good of all peoples, the safety of your church and the unhampered spread of your Gospel, was ask you to intervene and establish justice, peace and prosperity.
Sunday Evening Pastoral Prayer (Middle of the service):
(Prayer Exhortation) The sacred singer sings in Psalm 69.16: “Answer me, O LORD, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.” Genuine prayer is bigger and broader and roomier than simply wanting God to satisfy our “gimme, gimme, gimme.” Ultimately, it is about the nearness, closeness of God himself. As St. Augustine cautions us, “Alas, it is easy to want things from God and not want God himself, as though the gift could ever be preferable to the giver.”
- O Lord our God, you are unlike the gods humankind manufactures, gods who are stingy and self-indulgent, tightfisted and unprincipled. Instead, you made Adam and Eve and placed them in the midst of plenty, giving them extravagantly all things richly to enjoy, not so that you could use them or toy with them, but that they would swell up in richer, deeper loyal affection. Rouse our hearts that we may become increasingly satisfied with you, gratified with your lavish love, overwhelmed with the abundance of your mercies, and so engraced with resolve to withstand the temptations and repel the infections of Satan, society, and self-centeredness, that with pure heart, sound mind and holy delight, we may ever be yours, body and soul. O Lord, hear our prayer.
- God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray for East 6th Church of Christ; Eastlake Cumberland Presbyterian Church; The Edge Church; Edmond Church of Christ; Edmond Trinity Christian Church. By the outward and inward work of your Holy Spirit, grant them to walk in the Highway of Holiness, where no unclean one or ravenous adversary walks, but only the redeemed walk there. That the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; {where} everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; {where} they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 35.8-10). O Lord, hear our prayer.
- O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, we remember before you those who are in need, pain, worry, distress, and those aching with aging...give them relief, heal and restore them, and lift their spirits that they may know days of refreshing happiness, and joy in you. O Lord, hear our prayer.
- Triune God, when you created our first parents in your image, you “took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2.15). Even before sin, the curse and death, there was God-given work: fruitful, unfailing, satisfying, God-blessed work. We pray for our professions and occupations, whether at home or out in the corporate world; (1) help us to do them unto you, O Lord; (2) grant us success in all of our lawful endeavors; (3) aid us in fostering good work relations that our callings will be pleasurable; (4) and make the wages and returns sufficient and rewarding. O Lord, hear our prayer.
Hear our prayer, O Lord
Hear our Prayer, O Lord.
Incline Thine ear to us
And grant us thy peace.
(Trinity Hymnal # 728)
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Mike
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