Pastoral Prayers 26-30

Pastoral Prayer #26

By Ed Vasicek

(parts influenced by 2 Peter 1)

Yahweh, the Great I Am, the Maker of all that is, we worship and adore You. You delight in the praises of Your people.

Father, we thank You for the reality that we are complete in Christ. We have not followed cleverly crafted fairy tales, but Your Son, our Savior, truly walked this earth, died for our sins, rose again, ascended into heaven, and will one day return to reign.

In the meantime, Your power has given us all that pertains to true godliness and eternal life, granting us Your precious and great promises. Christ is in the process of recreating His character within us, which is also Your character, Father. Your Spirit helps us as we seek to add Christian virtue to our lives, building upon the growth we have experienced and adding more growth to it. We don’t want to revert to the sins that characterized us before we came to know You, and we want to make it evident to ourselves that we are truly Your children, chosen by You.

We are not content, O Lord, to be saved and heaven bound; we want to hear that “well done, good and faithful servant” from our Savior. Help us to shine for You as we remember how our Lord’s face shone on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Father, we have many burdens on our hearts. Some of them are shared burdens for our nation. We think of the COVID Delta variant, and it seems to be dampening our hopes of putting the Pandemic behind us. Help those infected who are fighting this awful virus even as we speak, and help those in the medical field who are striving to serve them. Bless their attempts, we pray.

We also pray for:

We have some requests we bring before You silently.

Father, we come to church today with all sorts of stresses and burdens. We pray that we might find encouragement, insight, strength, and edification for our souls. Bless the preaching of the Word, and may Your Spirit apply the Word to our hearts. Grant us discernment, help conform our will to Yours, help us bless Your Name, and help us to encourage one another.

We pray in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Pastoral Prayer #27

By Ed Vasicek

(loosely based upon I Peter 2)

Father, You our are Father, and You dwell in unapproachable light in the highest heaven. Yet, through Jesus Christ our Lord, we can approach Your throne and find an audience with You. Because we are in Christ, You are predisposed toward us.

Lord, as You know, this world is not our home. We are aliens, strangers, pilgrims passing through. Our citizenship is with You in heaven. We are Your priests, Your special people. Some of us may be so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good, but most of us struggle with the opposite problem: we are so earthly minded that we are of limited heavenly good. Help us to set our minds on heaven and, in obedience to our heavenly King, do much good on earth. May others see Jesus Christ in us.

In an age that shuns authority – even Your authority – help us to be noted as those who submit to authority. You are the highest authority, but You give us lesser authorities, and we are to be respectful toward them. Keep us from cynical attitudes, keep us from being know-it-alls and help us to avoid being puffed up with pride.

Give us, O Lord, an appetite for You and Your inspired Word. In an age when the Bible is less popular in our churches, help us to be people of the Book. We know, O Lord, that we need to grow in order to serve You better, and the Word of God is our spiritual food.

Although many mock and reject our Lord Jesus Christ, help us make Him the foundation of our lives. He so loved us that He took our sins upon Himself to save us. Now He wants to be our Shepherd and Guide. May we allow Him to have the final Word.

Father, our neighbors, our nation, and our world all need Your help. We pray that You would continue to pour out common grace on mankind. Help those struggling with COVID, guide our leaders, and help those in war-torn nations. Stop the persecution of Your people, and may their persecutors be won to faith in You.

Lord, right now we commit some of our personal requests before You silently:

Lord, as we continue to contemplate You and Your Word in this service, do not merely give us a dose of adrenaline or a temporary enthusiasm. Instead, O Lord, help us to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We pray in His Name, Amen.

Pastoral Prayer # 28

By Ed Vasicek

(Based loosely on Isaiah 61:1-3)

Yahweh, the One Who is and the One Who caused all to be,

We thank You for sending Your Son, empowered by Your Spirit, as the Christ, the Messiah, the Annointed One. His first coming was certainly good news, for He called all to repentance toward God and faith in Him as God’s Promised Savior. The good news got even better when He died to atone for our sins on the cross, was buried, and rose again.

This message humbles the arrogant and proud, for they need to face their lost condition apart from Christ. Worldly status or competitive achievements mean nothing when it comes to the soul. We pray for our lost friends who have not faced the ugliness of their sin and their lack of status before You, that You would grant them the repentance that leads to life.

The Gospel message lifts the humble and devastated, as they see that You, O Lord, truly love them, even if they feel no one else cares or respects them. You especially delight in pouring out Your grace to the humble.

We thank You, O Lord, that You care about our heartaches and seek to comfort us. You help deliver us from our bondage to sin and self-centeredness. You want to free us from the devil’s snares, and You want us to live new lives in Christ.

We look forward to the return of our Savior, the glorification of our new bodies, and the Kingdom He will set up on earth. We are aware that each of us, as believers, must appear before the judgement seat of Christ, where we will give account for all that we have done. We are Your stewards. As for the lost, You, O Lord will judge them, too, as they appear before Your Great White Throne.

Father, Your Son told us that in this world, we would have tribulation. As we mourn life’s tragedies and disappointments, as we struggle with feeling depressed or lonely or fearful, we thank You that this is only a temporary struggle. One day You will give us a beautiful headdress instead of ashes and the oil of gladness; we will be clothed in garments of praise. As a matter of fact, You give us a good sample of that right now through Your Spirit. We can experience Your joy despite circumstances, even in this present world.

Lord, Your peace will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus as we silently bring our requests before You:

We also pray to You, the Almighty One, for needs in our church family and nation, including:

Father, You have made us to be oaks of righteousness. You are with us for the duration, all eternity. We bless You and praise You in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Pastoral Prayer # 29

By Ed Vasicek

(Loosely based on 2 Timothy 2:1-7)

Great God, Yahweh, the One Who was, Who is, and Who is to come, we bow our hearts before You in submission, admiration, and openness. We pray that Your Spirit would get more of us and control us so that Your will becomes our will.

Thank You, Lord, for saving us freely by Your grace through the atoning work of Jesus Christ our Lord. When we turn to You in repentance and believed in Jesus Christ, our lives were transformed. We were brought to spiritual life, a life that those without Christ cannot understand.

We also thank You for Your strengthening grace. You want us to be strong in Your grace, not in our own human power. Lord, we want to be faithful to You. We live in a day when many are turning their backs on Jesus Christ. We want to be part of the solution, O Lord. We want to invest ourselves in the lives of others, to encourage them to embrace the truths of the Bible and live in light of those truths. We want them to do the same for others. In this way, we can help develop a core of future lay-leaders and volunteers who take the faith of the Bible seriously. Help the older believers to seek out younger people they can invest in, and help younger people seek out older believers to casually mentor them.

Sometimes, Lord, You lead us in the path of suffering. We do not look for such opportunities, but You, O Lord, have a way of bringing them to us. Help us to be strong spiritual soldiers despite the pain, fear, depression, or sense of betrayal. Help us remember we are in Your army, and to put You above the cares of everyday life.

Help us, O Lord, when we are tempted to compromise our beliefs, or when we start thinking that the end justifies the means. Help us to play the game of life by Your rules. If we work hard to serve You, O Lord, You will bless us in many ways, and some of those blessings will come to us in the here and now, while others are reserved for glory. We ask that You would help us to understand these truths, and deepen our understanding of all Your Word.

Father, we have some specific needs in our church family, including:

Lord, we have many personal needs we bring before You silently:

Dear God, as we continue in this time of edification, praise, study, growth, encouragement, fellowship, and body life, we pray that Your Spirit would reinforce the faith within our hearts so that we leave here today encouraged, a bit deeper in our faith, and ready to serve You. We pray in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Pastoral Prayer #30

By Ed Vasicek

(Loosely based on 2 Timothy 1)

Dear Father in Heaven,

Thank You, Yahweh, for creating us, sustaining us, and helping us. For centuries, people have been worshiping and serving You for Who You are and what you are doing and have done. We thank You for the bonds that connect us to others, especially fellow believers to whom we are attached and with whom we fellowship before You. We long to be in heaven with You, and we long to fellowship with Your children.

Many of us have come to faith in Christ and been born again into Your Kingdom apart from being raised in believing homes. Lord, You have only children, no grandchildren. But we especially are thankful for homes where multiple generations have served and followed the Savior. Both categories of believers have their advantages and disadvantages.

Father, we thank You that have given special grace gifts to each of Your children, special workings of the Spirit. You have created us in Christ so that we need one another, and together we make a stronger whole as we pool these special gifts for Your glory. May Your Spirit fan our zeal to flame.

Although others may mock or put down our faith, help us to not be ashamed of our Lord Jesus Christ and His good news of salvation by His atoning death and victorious resurrection. Because of our Lord Jesus, we now join the ranks of the immortal.

Lord, You have entrusted to us the truth of Your Word. With Your Spirit’s help, help us to be faithful to that trust. Help us not to be among those who turn away from You, but rather among those who faithfully endure.

Thank You, O Lord, for the work of the Gideons. We so appreciate how You have used them to get your Word into places where people are. We thank You for the decisions for Christ, the lives that have been transformed, and the believers that have been strengthened through reading a Gideon Bible. Provide for, bless, and continue to use this ministry, we pray.

Father, we have many needs in our church, including:

Now, gracious Father, we bring our personal requests before Your throne:

We ask You to bless the rest of our time together, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Pastoral Prayers 26-30

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