Pastoral Prayers 41-45

Pastoral Prayer # 41

Pastoral Prayer for Pentecost

By Ed Vasicek

Dear Father, Jesus promised to send the Spirit to His disciples. Sure enough, at Pentecost, the Spirit descended upon them. Tongues of fire were seen above them as they praised and glorified You.

The Holy Spirit has baptized all believers into the Body of Christ; if we do not have the Spirit, we do not belong to Christ (I Cor. 12:13 and Romans 8:9). But we are not always filled with Your Spirit. May the Holy Spirit control us, empower us, and remove all hesitations about serving You. May others observe the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, a fruit describes as, “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).

Jesus promised that out of innermost being would flow rivers of living water, speaking of His Spirit (John 7:38). When we have no more to give, the Spirit’s supply helps us to given anyway, because His Spirit provides the refreshment that He offers. When we are dry and weary in well-doing, the Spirit animates us and strengthens us.

The Spirit also helps us to pray as we ought. We take a few moments to offer some of our requests before you:

Lord, the Spirit came at Pentecost, the beginning of the main harvest season. We thank You that You are helping us to harvest Your fields as young and old come to know Christ as Savior through the testimony of Your people. We especially ask You to bless the missionaries who are true to the Gospel and true to Your calling. We honor the sacrifices they make, and we consider it a privilege to partner with them in financial support. Continue to provide for our church so that we may send a portion of our offerings towards missions.

Help us, locally, to be Your witnesses. Help us to live well, so that when we speak a Word for Christ, we are not perceived as hypocrites. We pray that You would grant our family and friends the repentance that leads to salvation, but we also pray for all those with whom we are in contact. Use us to communicate the good news of Jesus atoning death and resurrection.

Now, Father, may Your Spirit continue to minister to us during the rest of our time together today, we pray, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Pastoral Prayer #42

Father’s Day Prayer

By Ed Vasicek

Dear God,

Today we in the U.S. celebrate Father’s Day. We honor fathers because You, Father, have designated that same title for Yourself. You certainly would not title Yourself “Father” if it were anything but a wonderful term.

Despite the dignity You lend to the responsibilities of fatherhood, fathers have taken a beating in our day. Not all dads have been good dads, but even good dads are often denigrated, mocked, and the brunt of insult humor.

Like all mankind, dads are fallen sinners who need to be redeemed. Christian dads are redeemed sinners who need to grow in Christlikeness, as do we all. Some are discouraged or distracted from pursuing Christlikeness. Others feel overwhelmed with the responsibilities they bear. Masculinity is in no longer in vogue, and so good godly dads have to swim against several strong currents.

Lord, help our Christian dads to fulfill their calling of exemplifying what it means to follow Christ. May those in our families or among our friends and acquaintances who do not know Christ come to know Him. Help dads – and their families – and lean upon You in the struggles of life.

Lord, we thank You that You are a perfect Father. You are always present, always involved, never absent, never late. You are the same and do not change. You have promised never to leave us or forsake us. We may not understand all Your ways, but we can understand what You have revealed about Yourself and Your plan in Your Word. You are not without direction, not without a plan, and our lives, in Christ, are not without purpose.

Father, you care about our needs, and we present a few of them to You:

We pray for the people of Ukraine, that You would protect them reunite them, and may this violent war end soon. We pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world who suffer the pains, fears, and separations of persecution. We pray for the families of those who have lost loved ones to persecution. Lord, may the blood of the martyrs be the seed of the church.

Now we commit the rest of our time together, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Pastoral Prayer #43

By Ed Vasicek

Father, we thank You that You timed everything so that our Lord Jesus would atone for our sins as You planned. His act of self-sacrifice is the ultimate act of love; He demonstrated His love for us. Yet He continues to love us and promised He will be with us to the end and for all eternity.

Though many reject our Lord Jesus clearly and without shame, other pretend to believe in Him, but deny Him through their actions. We thank You that You know Your own, and You discern between the wheat and the tares, something we cannot do – and perhaps should not do.

Father, help us follow the example of our Lord Jesus in serving one another. He, the King od the Universe, became incarnate to serve us! You value us that much. Help us to serve our Lord Jesus in return, and to serve one another. Help us to love You, Lord, and to love others, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We have many concerns to bring before You. We pray for the health of our church. We pray that You would help us direct our hearts and thoughts toward the spiritual, and toward heaven itself, where our Savior sits at Your right hand. Our church is a spiritual family, but we have a mission to make disciples. Steer our course in the right direction, we pray.

One day, He will arise and return to reign, bringing the promises of the Kingdom to bear on the earth. We often are tempted to throw in the towel, as the trend seems to be to move further and further away from You. So many have no hesitation about violating the moral boundaries that You have set forth in Your Word. Like lot in Sodom, our souls are troubled.

With all the gloom, Your kingdom goes on and people are coming to Jesus. Thank You for all missionaries, evangelists, pastors, and Christian workers of various kinds who are true to the Gospel, who accept the final authority of Your Word, and who serve you with fervent hearts. Provide for them, protect and their families, and give them fruit for their labors, we ask.

We bring our personal requests before You now:

Dear God, bless the remainder of our service. Speak to us from Your Word and take delight as we sing to You and speak to You in prayer. We pray in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Pastoral Prayer #44

By Ed Vasicek

Dear God,

Thank You that You are steadfast. Your love endures forever. You have granted us so much by Your grace. Indeed, we owe all to You. You are good.

You are a God Who loves His creation; You keep the systems you designed working. Because of Your faithfulness, we have laws of order that we can discover. Thank You, Lord, for Your structuring of physical life and Your concern to maintain it.

Thank You even more for eternal life, the new birth, and the indwelling Holy Spirit. We look forward to the reign of Your Son, our Lord Jesus, on the earth for a thousand years. And we look forward to the eternal New Heaven and New Earth that follows that 1,000 year kingdom.

We have dealt falsely with You, Lord, and yet You have been willing to forgive our hypocrisy and self-deceit. We have grieved Your Holy Spirit at times. Nonetheless, You are the Savior of all those who repent of their sins and receive our Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. When we stray, You convict us, sometimes discipline us, and sometimes allow us to reap the consequences of our foolish and wrong choices. Still, You always stand ready to help us turn from our sins and to help us return to a closer walk with You.

Thank You for sending unseen angels to guard and protect us from unseen dangers. Thank You for carrying us when we became too faint to carry on by ourselves. We so value Your intervention in our lives, in the lives of our loved ones, in our nation, and in our church.

Help our church, O Lord, but to be an example of the solution, not the problem. May our times together be times of escape from a godless world; grant us harmony, patience, and all the qualities we associate with agape love.

Father, we pray for the many people who, at one time or another, attended Highland Park Church. We think of the many children we have seen grow to maturity. Some are walking with You, and we sense that our efforts were not in vain. Others, Lord, are far from You, and are like those who never heard the Gospel, never worshiped You, never studied the Scriptures. It breaks our hearts, O Lord. We pray, our Father, that the seeds sown here or elsewhere would be fruit for the Kingdom of God, if not sooner than later. Apprehend them as you apprehended the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. Comfort us as we grieve over them, and help us to pursue You all the more diligently.

Now, Lord, we bring some of our personal requests before You:

Bless the remainder of this service today. Work in our hearts by Your Spirit, we pray, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Pastoral Prayer #45

By Ed Vasicek

Dear God and Father of Mankind,

We thank You, Yahweh, for Your faithful love, which is better than life. We thank You for our destiny as believers in Jesus Christ. One day, the war will be over. We will be given the victor’s garland in heaven.

Lord, help us borrow strength for today from what awaits us tomorrow. It is so easy to become weary in well-doing, especially when we see sinful people and sinful movements gaining all the momentum in our society. Remind us that, like our Savior, our eternal citizenship is in heaven. We are called to be good good stewards of all you have given us, and to represent Jesus Christ to the lost around us. You do not call us to repair all of society’s ills, but to serve as salt and light. Beyond that, we leave matters in Your hands, O Lord. Help us to navigate through the stormy seas of a declining culture and the problems, worries, and stresses of life in general. Help us keep our mind on things above.

Father, we are burdened for our brothers and sisters who are suffering persecution. It traumatizes us just to hear about what they have to go through, simply because they bear the name of Christian. May their persecutors be won to faith in Christ, and may the number of believers in these lands grow so quickly that persecution becomes a memory.

Father, we pray for our church. None of us knows the future beyond what You have revealed in Your Word. We pray that you would guide our leaders and our people into choices that promote godliness and the truth of Your Word. Give us the wisdom of the Spirit to be a people of great discernment and prudence.

We praise and thank You, O Lord, for the blessings with which You lavish us. We thank You for Your Presence in our lives, and, by Your grace, we submit ourselves to You are our Lord in both word and deed.

Today, we remember our many friends and relatives who need to come to know Christ. We pray that You would do a work in their hearts and draw them to Yourself. We pray for struggling individuals and families within the reach of our church, those fighting addictions, depression, loneliness, boredom, financial worries, relational issues, or disinterest in the Word and the things of the Spirit. Work in our hearts and in our circumstances, we pray.

We now take a moment to bring to you a few of our personal requests silently:

Thank You, our God, for hearing us.

We pray in Jesus’ Name, Amen.