prayer

Prayer for Summertime

/ Will N. / Leave a comment

O, Lord, Giver of every good gift, we give You thanks for the arrival of a new season of life. Bless us in the coming months with hearts that are aflame with a desire to honor You by serving our neighbors.

Help us to realize that our lives must be yielded to You before they can be laid down and offered for the good of those around us. Give us eyes to see what truly matters and to appreciate the needs next door, down the street, and around the world.

Grant us the wisdom to look beyond the distractions of headlines and status updates and instead to see the real people we encounter day by day who stand in need of care and compassion. May our hearts be filled with tenderness for the struggling among us. Help us not to turn away from those who can be hard to love as we realize our own shortcomings and struggles.

Watch over our young children and teachers as they enjoy their break from school. Be with our teenagers attending practices, traveling to events, and working summer jobs.

We pray a special measure of protection, grace, and courage for those who ending their school days and who are now moving forward to receive further education, to begin their careers, or to start their own families.

Be with the parents who must balance earning a living and making memories with their families. We pray for those striving for a better life as they also seek to support those dependent on them for help. We pray for single adults raising children alone and trying to balance the barrage of summer activities.

Grant mercies to those who are lonely today- may they find the community they long for. Bless those fighting the daily battle with addiction- grant them a measure of strength in this season when social events and vacations can provide added dangers of relapse.

Watch over those working out in the heat and storms of summer- bless the farmers, the linemen, the construction workers, law enforcement officers, and first responders.

Be with the old, the sick, and the infirmed who suffer most acutely during the long days of summer. Keep watch over all those facing the heat of our Southern summer without adequate cooling.

Remind us to look out for each other.

Be with those traveling for work, family, or fun during the coming week and the summer months ahead. Give them traveling mercies for safety as they journey.

Be with our country and community as the summer brings again the focus on politics and power. Help us to keep faith with one another and to extend grace to one another in such tense and troubled days. Let us realize that when the dust of our disagreements settles back to earth, we will be left facing our problems together. May this reality cause us to consider our hearts and give heed to our words even as passions are high and differences great.

Lord, we so often fall short of Your desires for us- we leave undone what we ought to do, and we do things that pull our hearts away from You and from the care we owe to one another. Help us, in ways big and small, to be conformed more and more to the image of Jesus. May this season open our eyes to His will for us.

In His name, amen.

Near to the heart of God

/ Will N. / Leave a comment

In times of uncertainty and pain as well as seasons of joy and calm, our daily goal as believers should be to draw nearer to the heart of God. We do this though paying attention to our emotions, filling our minds with Scripture, serving others, and lifting up our hearts in prayer.

I offer this prayer this week, and I hope you will use/adapt its words to fit the particular challenges and celebrations you may be facing today.

Lord, we ask to receive and acknowledge the appointed blessings You offer us this day. Help us not to grasp and grab, but to open our hearts and our hands to gratefully accept all that You seek to provide.

Grant us the ability to see the good around us and to praise You for it.

Help us to see blessings even in the midst of life’s burdensome seasons. Give us the awareness to appreciate grace even when it comes disguised as hard work, disappointment, or loss.

We would ask for the ability to see and discern what is best and most aligned for Your will for our lives.

Lord, help us to see ourselves.

Allow us to be honest and open with both our gifts and with our shortcomings.

Help us to realize and repent when we embrace paths that do not lead us into closer communion with You. Strengthen us to turn from such dangerous distractions and self-focused aims.

Only in appreciating our own weakness can we truly recognize our need to walk in continuous relationship with You.

We ask that our hearts would continually be open to Your nearness, and in this awareness, may we seek to share our hope with others.

We pray for the people we encounter each day- whether family in our homes or strangers on the street.

For those who do not know You, we pray for open eyes, open hearts, and opportunities to be impacted through the goods news found in Christ.

If we are knowingly living in rebellion to Your will, please draw us to Yourself through the message of the Word, faithful friends, and the conviction of conscience.

Give us the ability to live by faith- not rooted in our own self-will, but in every way aligned more and more to Your will for us.

Help us to praise the good works going on around us regardless of who will receive the credit. Allow us to be people who look to encourage rather than those who constantly seek to find fault. Help us to stay caring and curious as we navigate our way through this life.

Do not let us grow weary in doing good, but rather help us to develop the rhythms and practices we need to remain healthy even as we seek to serve the struggling. Give us an openness and awareness of people’s needs as we walk through life. Help us to observe and to inquire for ways to help and let us do this for people’s good and Your glory.

As we draw near to You, help us to see that such a focus allows us to draw near to others. Help us, like Jesus, to offer welcome and hope to the world that arises out of an assurance and connection to You.

In Christ’s name, amen.

Can You Be More Specific?

/ Will N. / Leave a comment

With the arrival of the new year, many of us are seeking to form new habits or renew practices to strengthen our walk with Christ. For the believer, prayer forms an important aspect not only of communication but deeper communion with God. Despite our acknowledging the essential nature of prayer, we often struggle to pray consistently.

What reminders can we apply in prayer to reengage when our prayer life has drifted to the dry or stagnant?

When we cannot seem to move beyond the laundry list of needs we often bring to God, it is powerful to stop and rejoice over the many blessings we already experience. Far too often, we give thanks in generalities. While we are indeed grateful for “all our many blessings,” we would grow in gratitude if we approached God at times with no other motive in prayer other than to say “thank you” for the blessings we now have. Rather giving thanks in summary before quickly moving to our remaining needs, I believe it would humble us to count, as the old hymn says, our many blessings, name them one by one, and see what God has done.

In addition to specific thanks, specific requests are vital as we enter God’s presence in prayer. While we certainly appreciate the reality that God knows our needs, the intimacy and comfort found in coming to God is increased when we are not content to pray in the abstract. While we understand the need to for broader, shotgun-like prayers in public settings (“We pray for all those grieving this week.”), our personal, private prayers can be filled with rifle-focused requests (“Lord, I lift up Mary from my high school class who lost her husband of 52 years last week after a long period of poor health. Strengthen her in her grief and in this new reality she is facing.”)

Not only does this specificity connect us more deeply to the people we pray for, but in praying this way, we come to see opportunities to add direct action to our prayers. Remembering people in more specific prayer naturally brings their needs to mind and may lead us to send a card, make a call, pay a visit, or perform a kindness.

Abstraction creates distance. If we pray for “the poor in our community,” we can keep struggling folks at arms-length. If I sit down and begin praying for Mrs. Smith who I know lost her son and is dealing with unexpected funeral expenses, I am much more likely to reach out to help. Both government and large-scale charity organizations are useful for the sizeable problems in our world, but the followers of Jesus must not turn away from praying for and seeking to serve our neighbors.

If we keep people in impersonal categories (the poor, the hypocrites, the liberals, the foreigners, etc.), it makes us much less likely to genuinely pray for or sincerely seek to serve them. The tendency to judge and generalize others is ancient, and it proves to be a damaging and destructive mindset for the people of God in every generation. Intentional prayer that leads us to serve breaks down these barriers and helps us imitate Christ in caring for individual souls rather than faceless crowds.

If we want to give ourselves to prayer in 2024, we make a good start by being more specific- both in the blessings we celebrate and the requests we offer to God.

God knows our hearts, but putting our thoughts into specifics helps us to know ourselves and those we would bless more fully.

Prayer For All Who Labor

/ Will N. / Leave a comment

Lord, as we recognize Labor Day this week, we lift up prayers of thanks and blessing for all who work diligently to impact the lives of others.

We honor all who seek to perform their work well and in doing so honor You through their vocations.

In all our faithful work, we seek to reflect Your nature as the God who makes, creates, and sustains all things and whose every work points to Your glory and greatness.

Our many vocations and our diverse array of callings can all be places of holy service where You are met and glorified.

We pray that all who labor will find both strength for their work and the satisfaction of rest that come from a life-giving relationship with You.

We pray for the parents and grandparents who give themselves day by day to the raising of our community’s children.

For the mothers who bring forth each generation in the sacrifice of labor and pain that keeps all life moving forward.

For the fathers who hold down jobs to lift up their children and provide not only the physical needs of their families but serve as role models of affection and support.

We pray for the servants who bless our communities by offering their constant work for our safety, health, and protection.

For the law enforcement officers who leave home each morning to face difficult, uncertain days, we give thanks.

For the doctors, nurses, healthcare, and EMS workers whose very labor is to preserve and sustain life for those in crisis, we offer a special measure of gratitude.

For public officials who seek to serve and bless those who have entrusted them with their positions of leadership, we lift up our thanks.

For the farming families who face the coming harvest, the perils of weather, and the impact global markets, we ask a measure of safety and strength.

For the factory and transportation workers who keep our country and our world fed, clothed, and growing, we pray for blessing in this busy season.

For the restaurant workers and retail employees who work long, taxing hours and still seek to respond to employers and customers with grace, we extend a blessing.

For the teachers and school staff who not only teach needed life skills but also inspire and encourage the most vulnerable among us, we offer our thanks.

For all who own, manage, and are employed by small businesses in changing economic times, we ask Your gracious encouragement and assurance.

For the many in our local communities who volunteer their time and talents, and thereby sustain and support those in need in essential ways, we offer thanks.

For the ministers, youth ministers, church staff, and those that give themselves to hospital chaplaincy, hospice counseling, jail ministry, and working with troubled youth, we lift up their work and their hearts today. May You grant to all of these men and women a special measure of grace and peace.

Lord, help us to give thanks for the blessing of work.

Help to faithfully honor the work of others.

Give us the ability to acknowledge and appreciate the unfinished tasks You have graciously placed before each of us.

May You be the motivation for all our daily work and the inspiration for all the good we seek to do and become in Your name.

In the name of the great Worker of Nazareth, we pray, amen.

Back to School Prayer

/ Will N. / Leave a comment

Lord, we give thanks for the blessing of change.

So often we resist those moments that throw us out of our rhythms and disrupt our self-focused schedules, and yet in this time of new things, we offer thanks.

We give You the glory for this rapidly-passing season of summer and the growth it has brought to our lives.

We give You praise for the children entrusted into our care and ask Your blessings on them as they return to school.

Education seeks to equip us not only to think but to feel and to be placed in situations that cause us to see and relate to the different experiences of others. Help our kids, and us, to learn what You seek to teach.

There are so many steps along the journey, and we implore safety, protection, and strength for our students and those that serve them.

For the kindergartener entering their classroom for the first time, we offer prayers for courage and confidence as they embrace new challenges and make new friends.

For the elementary school age child, we seek a blessing of calm and comfort- may our anxieties about our children not be placed too soon upon such small shoulders.

Help us, Lord, to realize that our children are hearing what we say and seeing what we share, and even a passing comment can cause harm.

Help us be better grown-ups.

Bless the middle schoolers who are passing through a period of great change in their young lives. Give us as adults the ability to model concern and compassion and to truly notice what is being shared (and left unshared) by our children each day.

Grant us grace with the teenagers in our lives. Help us to offer encouragement more than we pass judgment. Allow us the ability to perceive many of their mistakes and missteps as issues of maturity, and yet grant us the wisdom needed to patiently offer correction that encourages growth rather than resentment and further rebellion.

We pray too for those young people moving away- for college, vocational training, or military service. We offer a blessing on those now entering the workforce rather than a classroom for the first time in many years. Guide and guard them in these early experiences of their working life.

Bless the parents, grandparents, and extended family members who desire both a safe environment and a quality education for their students.

Help us all to see one another as instruments of grace as we work to build up the young people we love.

We lift up our teachers- the living avenues of learning in our community.

We pray for their strength and their patience both in reaching their students and in bearing up under the increasing weight of scrutiny that accompanies their daily work. We pray for the many administrators, coaches, counselors, bus drivers, cafeteria staff, maintenance crews, school resource officers, and volunteers who will impact our students and leave impressions in the year to come.

May their hearts seek the good of each student, and may we as a community support those who embrace these special roles.

Lord, as people, we often fear the unknown.

We cannot see the future for ourselves- much less the future for a child just beginning life’s journey.

We ask that You reveal to us ways to bless the children You have placed to our care.

Give us the humility to serve, the courage to advocate, and the grace to extend forgiveness as we journey through the coming school year together.

We ask these blessings in the name of the One who loves us all as His own dear children, amen.

Where are the people of God?

/ Will N. / Leave a comment

O LORD, we think we have it all figured out.

We are so certain that our ways are conformed to Your ways, and yet Scripture tells us that Your ways are higher- higher than this one moment, our frantic news cycle, our own all-absorbing ambitions and power grabs. We proclaim our oneness with You even as we reject and fear and refuse to love our neighbor- whichever neighbor we can be convinced to divide from and despise today.

God, help us.

When will we ever learn, Lord?

We prefer our labels to love.

We offer our political posturing rather than words of peace.

We choose noisy crowds over nuanced conversations.

We seize the win of an instant over the wisdom that can come only forth from seasons of reflection.

Lord, help us to recognize our faults and to appreciate our failures.

We are so limited, so small, so petty, so forgetful of the glory You offer in Christ.

And yet, we declare with the those of old, “we would see Jesus.”

Where is Jesus, Lord?
Where is Your visible presence among us?
Where are those called by Your name?
Where are the people of God in a world full of anger, bitterness, and self-seeking?

You answer again in the still, small voice of grace, and remind us that, “My people are right where they always have been…”

  • Proclaiming good news.
  • Speaking truth in compassion to the straying.
  • Declaring the truth in boldness to those bewitched by power.
  • Comforting the hurting, praying with the broken, and raising the oppressed.
  • Singing out hope in the darkness of despair.
  • Setting prisoners at liberty and lifting the burdens of the downcast.
  • Admitting shortcomings, acknowledging sins, and turning from wrongs.
  • Serving the poor, healing the sick, and sitting with sorrowing.
  • Fighting for change, cleaning up messes, and making amends.
  • Listening to struggling strangers on benches, on buses, and in bars.
  • Hearing the unspoken tensions that echo each night in hurting homes, broken communities, and lonely hearts.
  • Serving all those that go unserved.
  • Noticing those who others miss.
  • Loving all those that go unloved.
  • Pointing each soul to Jesus.

When it seems that all is lost, that every knee has gladly bowed in submission to the gods of this world, that all have compromised the glory of the eternal for the gratification of the momentary- remember the gates of death and hell have not prevailed.

They have not.

They will not.

They cannot.

Hold fast and take courage for He who promised is faithful.

Search Me, O God…

/ Will N. / Leave a comment

In our all-too-frequent moments of national crisis, religious leaders often declare that God’s people need to pray BIG prayers.

Prayers that will change our nation. Prayers that will revive our churches. Prayers that will halt gun violence and cure racism. We are told again and again that these are just the type of big, broad, and bold prayers that will bring our sin-sick society back to God.

While there is nothing wrong with offering such prayers for our hurting world, I believe the prayer with the most potential for lasting change is to ask God to truly show us the more personal challenges and compromises that so often rise up within our hearts and displace Him from His rightful place in our lives.

In Psalm 139:23-24, the inspired writer offers the words, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (KJV)

This prayer is both expansive and intimate, both personal and daring. In praying these words, we are not asking God to change the world in a instant or to overwhelm our lives with more material abundance- we are instead taking the difficult, yet necessary, step toward a closer walk with God by openly confessing our own limitations and admitting our vulnerability and frailties before His perfect holiness.

It is important to note what is being asked in this two-verse prayer.

When we ask God to search the heart, we are asking for one of the most intimate and intense experiences possible. We know from Scripture that the human heart without God’s presence is “deceitful about all things…desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9). In a world where evil is attributed to various combinations of environment, heredity, chance, social issues, and bad choices, believers realize that there is a spiritual component to the darkness in our world. Such darkness is not only abstractly thriving “out there” in repeated tragedies like mass shootings, ongoing heartaches like the opioid crisis, and broken social systems that promote racial/class/religious divisions, but this spiritual darkness is also present to some degree within each person who inevitably does wrong and sinful things each day.

When Paul says, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” he truly means all of us (Rom 3:23).

When we consider the words of Psalm 139, it is essential to observe whose heart we desire God to search and expose. When my neighbor hurts me, I want to know why. When my spouse is unkind, I can dream up all sorts of reasons for the behavior. When someone cuts me off in traffic, I want him to see the error of his ways, yet the psalmist’s prayer is not focused on the hearts or actions of others.

“Search me” is an invitation for God’s eye to be trained upon my own thoughts and motivations.

Unless I am willing to acknowledge God’s right as my Creator and Sustainer to search me and to reveal my own character, I miss out a vital tool in my spiritual growth. People often say “God knows my heart,” and while that is certainly true, we need to also ask God to reveal the secrets and subtleties of our own hearts to us.

Only with such God-centered discernment can we ever see ourselves truly.

We cannot know ourselves without the faithful presence and perspective of God. When we fail to see ourselves truly, we inevitably yield to compromise and self-centeredness.  We become indulgent of our own faults and embittered toward the failings of others. Our own hearts are incapable of maintaining an honest perspective without the refining presence of God. When we allow God to truly search us, see us, and reveal our true nature to us, we will receive clarity and insight that may be hard to hear, but will serve to mature our faith.

With God’s vision, we are empowered to both admit our errors and allow ourselves a greater measure of grace.

The greatest treasures in the life of faith can only be revealed when we allow our greatest hurts to be healed by God’s love. And such healing demands both the awareness of our wrongs and the admission of our need.

Unless we open ourselves willingly to God’s refining judgment, we miss out the growth and gains that can come only from the ever-flowing provision of His grace.

God does know our hearts, and He longs to reveal them to us as well.

When this revelation of our own reality occurs and is acknowledged, genuine humility is experienced and genuine healing can begin.

A Prayer in Changing Seasons

/ Will N. / Leave a comment

You, O Lord, are good and do good.

You have prepared every good gift we experience in this life.

You have guided, sustained, and filled our lives with good things from the beginning of all creation until now.

Without Your humility in coming to us, we could never know You- much less dare to appeal to You in prayer, and yet You instruct to ask, to seek, and to knock.

Through Jesus, You have promised the answer, the revelation, the open door, and so we continue to lift our voices in gratitude and praise and petition before You.

Father, hear the prayer we offer this day.

We stand, Lord, on the brink of yet another new season- another time of change.

By Your Word and through our own experiences, we know that nothing stands still in this life.

In each season, we lack any certainty in ourselves, yet we crave greater clarity and constancy than our physical senses can provide.

Give us, Bringer of the seasons, the ability to acknowledge and accept the cycles of change that always accompany the passage of time.

Free us from the bitterness of hurt and anger and grief, and instead let us raise up grace, peace, and joy in our hearts- even if we are called to build upon the foundation of the hardships we all face in this life.

Strengthen our hands to be quick to the work You have called us to in this season of our lives.

Lift our eyes to see the opportunities that are present now, and encourage us to redeem the time we have been given to make the most of the gifts You have placed before us in this moment.

Grant us the ability to see the beauty of budding trees, opening flowers, and singing birds.

Help us, even in our finite limitations, to see Your hand and presence in the daily unfolding of our lives.

May the springing forth of new life in creation signal the resurrection and renewal within us and hasten the passing away of resentment and anger from our hearts.

Let our harshness cease and glad songs return after the long, bitter darkness of winter.

Draw us together again into the fellowship of the community, and in drawing us together, allow us to be more and more comforted in Your embrace.

Bless us with the perspective that time alone can bring, and grant us the grace to offer patience and compassion to those in our lives whose understandings lead them to different perspectives, positions, and points of view.

Allow us this greater grace, accompanied by genuine desire, that we might long to extend Your grace to others.

Help us to love one another deeply, for from such love, we will seek to heal offenses, help our neighbors, and continue to hope in Your unfailing goodness.

Let the old bitterness born of self and selfishness die away, so that our hearts might be prepared for renewed life in this season of new beginnings.

Hear our prayer and heal our hearts that we might seek to serve in Your name.

Through Christ, the Eternal Unchanging One, we pray, amen.