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.

Prayer for Stormy Times

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Father God, the weather is unpredictable, but we know that You are constant and ever-sure.

Like the spring, we too are inconstant; often blown off course and shifting in the challenges and trials of life.

You know our frame, our limitations, our weaknesses. Despite our defenses, we falter, fail, and fall.

Help us to see that our effort at self-defense always leaves us short of the deliverance that can only be experienced in surrender to You. Give us the ability to see the folly of resisting our great need for Your divine care and grace in each moment of our lives.

Even we who long to reach upward can never scale to the perfect heights we seek. We give thanks that in lovingkindness You descend to us.

In the blessings of our daily experiences, in the bold assertions of Your word, in the beautiful community of the church- You show us more of what we can be.

Yet these gifts would be nothing without the Giver.

Incarnate in Bethlehem, walking in Galilee, dying outside Jerusalem, rising in power to die no more.

In Jesus, You come among us clothed in the dust and ashes of creation.

You do not offer an absentee love, but place the fullness of Yourself in our midst.

To the vulnerable, You are a protector.

To the self-sufficient, You are a servant.

To the prideful, You are a warning.

To the broken, You are a healer.

To the burdened, You are a liberator.

To the hungry and hopeless, You are Daily Bread and Living Water.

To the lost, You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

In Your grace, You choose to place Your love upon us. You extend constant sustaining blessings and the opportunity for salvation.

What more could You do to give Yourself to us and for us?

Help us to see this love. Help us to accept it. Help us to experience it more and more fully, and help us to live our lives in response to it. In this season, let us choose to pass forward the love we have received.

In tense times and uncertain days, may our lives be marked by a Christ-like humility that silences the mouths of critics and opens the hearts of cynics.

Let us not be bewitched by power nor lulled into passivity. Give us the courage to withstand the assaults of enemies and the compromises of friends. Grant us, as Your people, the ability to shine light into the darkness.

Let us not be tossed by the stormy winds that threaten from both within and without, but let us instead be fixed and anchored to a love that cannot be shaken and will not be moved.

In Christ’s holy name and through His power we pray, amen.

Lest we forget Gethsemane…

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Sometimes a verse you have read a hundred times just hits differently. The Scriptures are timeless, but as believers, we are shaped and shattered by time and our own experiences, and we bring our changing perspectives to our reading of God’s Word.

Between Luke 22:42 when Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane for relief if possible but for the Father’s will to be done above all, and Luke 22:44 which describes His agony and the intensity of His sorrow dripping down as blood-like sweat, Luke 22:43 reads:

“Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him.”

When I read this recently, I was reminded of Hebrews 2:16, “For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham.”

Jesus did not take the form of angels to redeem them, and yet angels strengthened Him as He came in human likeness to redeem us. In His moment of greatest suffering, Jesus was blessed by strength sent from heaven and was empowered to endure. It has been said, “Every life has its Gethsemane, and every Gethsemane has its angel.” In that ancient grove, among the olive trees whose fruit was pressed to bring forth oil for food, light, and healing, Jesus was pressed down and poured out for us.

I know people right now passing through their own pressing dark night of the soul- illness, addiction, estrangement, grief, loss. You know these folks too- it may even be you or someone close to you is experiencing such a season even as you read these words. Whatever we face, may we realize that when Jesus suffered on our behalf, He was not instantly delivered nor was the source of His suffering destroyed- instead, His Father provided Him with the strength to bear the terrible burden.

Whenever we suffer, we are never alone. No matter what form our trials take, our Lord stands with us in the midst of the hurricane to strengthen and support us. Not only in the form of faithful friends, not only through the unseen ministries of angels, but God Himself is with us and within us to supply His power to help us endure.

“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.’” (Psalm 91:1-2)

May we continually draw strength from the realization that while darkness lingers, ultimate suffering has been already been overcome- not by our strength, but by Christ’s surrender and His suffering in our place.

In His humility, Jesus comes as one of us and takes life’s harm, hurt, and hate on our behalf. In our own strength, we can never simply resolve and then do better. We can never fully overcome the pull of our own hearts to forsake the best and right paths for those that seem simpler, safer, and easier. We cannot power through the struggles, sufferings, and sorrows of this life alone, but we can, when conformed to the spirit of Christ, humbly surrender and receive the strength and the support that God supplies.

In looking to the Father’s strength and trusting His will, we imitate the perfect example of Jesus, and we gain the assurance of God’s presence and power with us our trials.

Each life indeed has its share of Gethsemane’s sorrows, but because of Gethsemane’s Savior, we never need to bear our burdens alone.

Near to the heart of God

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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?

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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

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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

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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?

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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.

Summertime Prayer

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In this change of season, Lord, we ask also for a change of heart.

Take our reservoirs of defensiveness and self-preservation, and let these stored energies be transformed into streams of kindness and compassion.

Lord, in a culture that tells us to demand more and more, allow us to find satisfaction with less and less.

Grant us the awareness and humility to see when our hearts are being pulled away from the center of who we are called to be in Christ.

Open our eyes that we might see ourselves more clearly, and in the realization of our weakness, return to You and Your strength.

May a better sense of our own limitations cause us to experience a growing grace toward our neighbors.

Clarify our desires- help us to recognize the dangers that arise from settling for passing entertainment and distraction when we actually long for purpose and meaning.

Restore within us the wonder and joy of seeing holy things.

Give us the child-like awe of watching bubbles spiraling upward, spying rainbows emerging from the midst of summer storms, and tasting Sno-cone sweetness running down our chins on a hot July day.

Help us to love this creation that You have given us to enjoy- open our eyes that we might take less for granted and give praise for more and more of life’s pleasures.

Draw us to constant celebration of the goodness of Your very good world in each aspect of our lives.

Open our souls to be filled to overflowing with appreciation and wonder.

Let the beauty of Your gifts, as well as the truth of Your Word, draw us back to You through all our days.

Overwhelm us with Your ever-renewing kindness and compassion.

May our hearts, broken by the hardships of life, be refreshed by the awareness that You are with us and continually strengthen us.

Implant within us a greater desire and growing commitment to walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh.

Help us to see that we cannot stand in our own power nor survive in our own strength.

Cause us to admit that we cannot thrive without Your presence and the fellowship of Your people.

Draw us away from our individualistic pursuits of power and recognition that we might form together the community of faith You long to inhabit and empower to live out Your mission in our world.

Let our dreams of Your kingdom be so deep and broad that they are doomed to fail without Your approving participation and our mutual cooperation.

Help us to faithfully see ourselves, both strengths and weaknesses, and to yield all for Your glory and the good of Your kingdom.

In all things, may we be drawn together as we are drawn more and more to Jesus.

In His holy and awesome name, we pray, amen.

“But I believe…”

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Photo credit: Abbey of Gethsemani

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

– Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude