"Pray" - 8 September 2024

Holy Father, our Lord Jesus once proclaimed: “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”[1] Therefore, we praise you who sends sun and rain on the just and the unjust, who provides food for the good and the evil, thank you for your tender mercies enjoyed by so many.

O God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom the whole heavens adore; let the whole earth worship you, all nations obey you, all tongues confess and bless you; and men, women, girls and boys everywhere love you and serve you in peace through Jesus Christ. We ask this especially for families, neighbors, co-workers, and friends we know (…).

Almighty God, we pray for your church world-over and in the greater OKC area, especially Maranatha Baptist Church, Mustang Church of the Nazarene, 1st Nazarene Yukon, and Nehemiah Baptist. We pray that their work, toil, patient endurance and rejection of evil would flourish; that they would not abandon their first love; and that where they have fallen into error or compromised with the world that you would straighten them out and build them up.[2]

Lord, we beseech you for this congregation, please grant us the grace we need to withstand the temptations and avoid the infections of the world, the flesh and the devil; so that with pure heart, sound mind and holy delight we may follow you, our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever One God. And beat down Satan under our feet.

Father, we know our nation is not spotless. We confess and acknowledge that the U.S.A. is not the kingdom of God nor the Church of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, Father, we love our country. It’s a blessing to live here, and for that we thank you. Please build up moral sanity among our people and civic sensibility among our governmental leaders. Where decency and virtue are on the decline, wake us up to the train wreck that will be of our own making and grant us to turn around.

Our great God, in whose hands is our life, health and wellbeing: hear our prayers for those who are hungry, homeless, hopeless, impoverished, imperiled, suicidal, dismayed, those whose bodies stricken or homes wrecked, those being hampered with mental or emotional complications, (…). Brighten their days with hope and true happiness; grant them patience under their affliction and a cheerful outcome to their infirmity. And now we join together to pray as you taught us, saying, Our Father…

[1] Matthew 5:44-46
[2] Revelation 2:1-7