"Lord God, Our Father" - 26 August 2018

(Mollie Tibbetts, last seen alive on 18 July 2018. Her body was found on 21 August 2018)

Lord God, our Father, we long to see your power, justice and majesty flow into every nook and cranny of creation.  Therefore we pray for your Church and your World. For this congregation (both gathered and scattered) we pray: Hold us by your hand so that our feet may never slip. Turn our worries, fears, fretting and woes all into faith in you. Be pleased to continue to add to this your flock such as are being saved; and cause our retired guys coffee, breakfast and brotherhood time, women’s Bible study, Mom’s and Littles, and Sunday School classes, to aid us in glorifying and enjoying you better.

Be with your Church all over the earth, including Knob Hill Baptist Church; Korean Lighthouse Baptist; Lakeview Baptist; and Macedonian Baptist Church; as well as our brothers and sisters who seem to be drowning in persecution, famine, economic collapse and warfare; strengthen what is pleasing to you, remove what is foul and festering, heal what is hurting, and provide all that is lacking.

We ask your healthful care and sustaining mercy for all who feel the walls closing in on them, who find health, life, joy and wholesomeness slipping away from them, who are under any kind of tribulation and distress…Make haste, O God, to deliver us; make haste to help us O Lord! 

Mighty God, who loves creation, and will one day completely restore and transform the groaning creation: bring all wildfires under control, make the earth and seas bountiful and full of life, mend what is vandalized and brutalized, and show us our role in honoring you by honoring our earth.

God of justice and compassion, we pray for Mollie Tibbetts’ family in this time of their grief and anguish that you would bestow peace, and wholeness. This horrible situation reminds us that there are many missing girls and boys and men and women of all different ethnicities in our country. May they be found, may their families be helped, and may evil be brought to justice.

Please show great kindness on all our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, those at home and those deployed, that they will triumph over evil, and in that triumph be drawn close to you through Jesus Christ, and be healthy and whole in mind and body.

We pray that you would bring lasting and substantial peace to all nations, including Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, and our own country. Bestow on all lands godly and goodly government that there would be true and genuine liberty and justice for all – free born, foreign born and unborn. 

Finally Lord, we long to see you act and work and move in the lives of people who have never confessed Christ Jesus as the Lord….in the lives of those who have strayed away from the faith…and in the lives of those who claim to be hardcore atheists and scoffers…; Give them new hearts to believe in Christ, new eyes to see your providential care of and order in creation, and new desires for obeying You. We ask all of these requests in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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