Congregational Prayer: 28 September 2014 PM

[If you find this set of prayers useful, or a portion beneficial, please use them. You have my full permission. Mike]
----
We give thanks to you, O God; we give thanks, for your name is near. We recount your wondrous deeds. At the set time that you appoint you will judge with equity. Even when the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is you who keep steady its pillars. Truly it is not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness that there comes lifting up, but it is you, our God, who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another (Psalm 75.1-3, 6-7). Glory to you, O Lord God, the most high!

 Lord Jesus, who took the woman that had the disabling spirit for 18 years, and set her free at your word, “Woman, you are freed from your disability;” who liberated that daughter of Abraham whom Satan had bound for eighteen years, loosening her from bondage on that Sabbath day (Luke 13.11-16); grant the same for those for whom we pray – those facing surgery; those dealing with the fearsome fright of cancer; those earnestly ailing and aching; those depressed and dark; those bound and debilitated. And please comfort and care for those who lost loved ones in Moore this past week. O Lord, hear our prayer.

 Lord our God, when violence momentarily erupts in our businesses and schools it startles and frightens us; it angers and worries us. But it also reminds us how little violence there really is in this country. Thank you for the comparative safety and wellbeing we experience in this land. May this safety and well-being continue here for us, for our children and grandchildren for generations to come. And Lord God, reflecting on what you told your servant Isaiah, please forgive us for calling “conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy,” for fearing and dreading what they fear. It is you, O LORD of hosts that we are to honor as holy. It is you who are to be our fear, you who are to be your dread (Isaiah 8.12-13). O Lord, hear our prayer.

Caring Father, compassionate God, we still need more rain here in Oklahoma, in West Texas, and all the way out to California. Oh God, redirect jet streams and weather patterns that our lands, crops, cattle, springs and aquifers may be replenished. O Lord, hear our prayer.

 Mighty God, look on the international landscape; we pray on behalf of weeping mothers, suddenly-orphaned children, grieving fathers, and swiftly widowed men and women in war-ravaged lands! Dear God, have mercy and grant peace in our time, and may justice and righteousness prevail in all places. Relieve the suffering and the hunger seething in drought-stricken and famine-afflicted regions, as well as those being ravaged by pestilence. And open the doors that we may somehow be part of your cure.  O Lord, hear our prayer.
We beseech you on behalf of your church throughout the world, as well as Fortieth Street Baptist Church; Friendship Baptist Church; Garden Addition Baptist; God’s Chosen People Baptist; Good Shepherd Missionary Baptist Church: along with our Reformed University Fellowships at OSU; RUF at OU; RUF at Univ. Tulsa; “Give us life, and we will call upon your name! Restore us, O LORD God of hosts! Let your face shine, that we may be saved” (Psalm 80.18b-19)! O Lord, hear our prayer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?" (Rev. Ed.) by John Fea. A Review

Image
  John Fea is a professor of history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, PA. A university founded in 1909 by the Brethren in Christ Church. He originally published "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction" in 2011, and it was revised in 2016. This 328-page paperback is packed full with Colonial and American history, drawing from original sources to answer that question. It is a book written "for the historically minded and thoughtful reader who is looking for help in sorting" out this question, avoiding polemics (xix). Since we live in a sound-bite culture, Fea recognizes that it is difficult to have a sustained dialogue on this topic, but he makes a valiant effort toward having that sustained dialogue. The book reads fairly straightforward, and doesn't seem to get bogged down in the contentious mudpuddles or bogs. In the end, Fea seems to get his point across. To answer the reigning question if America was founded as a Christian...
Read more

Union with Christ - An Application

Image
  (This was my weekly letter to my congregation on Wednesday, 21 February 2024) This morning in my devotional reading, I was working through 1 Corinthians 8. Though I’ve read these words a huge number of times over the years, today one verse caused me to stop and take stock.  Paul wrote, “ Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ ” (1 Corinthians 8:12). What struck me is a couple of things. First, in God’s saving work, we are – by grace alone – united (hitched, bonded, ingrafted) to Christ so much so, that what happens to us happens to him, and what is his becomes ours (think of Galatians 2:20, for example). As Sinclair Ferguson put it, “through union with Christ all that is his by incarnation becomes ours through faith” (“The Christian Life,” 110). Let that percolate in your heart for a while. Your fear, anxiety, tears, and so forth, he feels. And his “ Peace, be still ” is yours. Second, the way we treat one an...
Read more

"Ah, Lord! We are Animated by Anger and Anxiety, Fear and Fury..."

Image
I hesitate to put this out there because of the combative environment we are in at present. But I think some souls will take courage from this, and some will also join with me as we get to the end of this little composition. I am struck by the words of God in Zechariah 8. As he rehearses the waywardness and faithlessness of his people in the past, he clearly declares that he " set every man against his neighbor " (8:10). That got me thinking long ago. I started putting the pieces together and realized that one of God's acts of judgment is division, setting a man against his neighbor. That's what happened when he divided his people into the northern tribes and southern tribes (see 1 Kings 11:26-40). Because of Solomon's turning aside, allowing his wives to turn his heart away from the God of his father, David, the Lord brings about a rift in God's people. And this pattern of divisive judgment runs throughout Scripture. On the other hand, truthful unity is the g...
Read more