A Prayer For the Church

 

 

Eternal God, we come into Your presence with humility and yet with boldness for we come at Your invitation.  We know You would not invite us to commune with You, if You did not plan on hearing and answering our prayer.   Help us today to be more understanding of Your unmerited love; to be more amazed at Your marvelous grace; to be more desirous of Your warm presence.

 

This morning we want to pray for the church, and even more importantly, for our church.  We pray for all pastors who have the privilege and the awesome responsibility of preaching Your Word.  We pray for our pastors.  Grant to them deep insights into Your truth and the gift of communication that it may be understood by all who hear them.  May the words of Jesus, “He who hears You, hears me, and he who rejects You, rejects me, and he who rejects me, rejects him who sent me” be the platform from which they proclaim Your truth.

 

Make them bold to declare all that You have revealed to them.  May they realize that they speak not only to individuals who sit before them but to the church of which all are a part.  That what is asked of the individual is also asked of the church.  The corporate sins of the church are as offensive as are the sins of the individual.  We ask this morning that You forgive us of our lack of love, but we also ask that You forgive our church for her lack of love for those in need in the community which it serves.  We ask this morning that You forgive us for our lack of passion, but we also ask that You forgive our church for its failure to be on fire for You.  We ask forgiveness for our apathy, but we also ask forgiveness for the indifference of our church to the many opportunities to minister  to a needy world.   We ask forgiveness for our lack of faith to move out of our comfort zone, we also pray this morning for our church for its slowness to be a risk taker for Jesus and His kingdom.   

 

Father, we love Your church, she is the bride of Christ, spare her from being unfaithful to the bridegroom.  She is the body of Christ, spare her from being the corpse of Christ.  May she not only seek to quiet the anxious, comfort the comfortless, strengthen the faint hearted and console the sorrowful, but may she awaken the slumbering, arouse the tired, challenge the indifferent, and light a fire in the bones and the belly of all who come under the preaching of Your Word.

 

Lord help us to hold our fundamental beliefs firmly, but lightly, lest we appear smug and arrogant and push others from us not only, but also from You.

 

Hear our prayer, O Lord.  In Jesus name we pray.  Amen.