Weldon D. Nisly
PASTORAL
PRAYER
Loving God, we are thankful to be alive today.
We are thankful for each
breath of life as a gift from you.
We are grateful that the
breath of your Holy Spirit breathes in us
and through us so that we might become part of your life
given to the world.
Come again this
morning to be filled with your life-giving spirit.
We come to be transformed by
your life-giving word.
Teach us to
be people of the Word.
Make us your
biblical people
growing in wisdom and
faith as the body of Christ.
Gracious God, you revealed yourself in Jesus of
Nazareth.
For your Incarnate Presence we
thank you.
We long for your healing touch
in the healing power of Jesus.
We long for your word in the
teaching of Jesus.
We long to follow Jesus
wherever that takes us –
to synagogue and city, to
principalities and powers,
to serve and be served, to
give and receive
all that you offer and
call forth from us in Jesus’ name.
Yet
we are so reticent
to commit our whole self
and to give up our life to have life with Christ.
Like the people in the synagogue of
we are astonished by your presence and we flock to you.
We give you
praise and we know that we are yours.
Yet we resist being wholly yours
and wholly the Body of Christ.
O God, we know that you invite us today to bring
our un-whole whole self to you.
You welcome us and call us to
bring all our brokenness to you for healing:
–
our hopes and dreams,
–
our sadness and sorrows,
–
our inadequacies and insecurities,
–
our illnesses and weaknesses.
Heal us, O Healer of our
every ill;
Heal us, we pray, on this thy
holy day.
Merciful God, we sometimes approach prayer as a
casual exercise
or a cure-all medicine
or as an escape from the
evils of the world
or even an escape from the
brokenness of our own lives.
Yet your own Jesus, whom you reveal to us in the
gospels,
has shown us in your Holy Word that prayer too can be a
realm
of danger, of struggle,
and of temptation.
As Jesus faced the tempter in the wilderness
or sweated drops of blood in the
or, as Jesus in today’s Gospel, went off to a deserted
place to pray,
so may we be steadfast and faithful in prayer.
O God, we pray for your mercy and your abiding
presence in our lives and life together.
Help us to bring whatever
brokenness we bear to you for healing.
Help us to pray a prophetic
word confronting the principalities and powers.
Help us to dare to bring to
you whatever demons and demonizing
that live in us and
threaten to undo us.
Help
us to acknowledge and enter into prayer as subversive activity.
For in you alone, O God, is
our authority.
In you alone is our security.
In you alone is our true
healing.
In you alone is our
wholeness.
In you alone is our holiness.
Help us, with your servant Paul and the early church,
to do all for the sake of the gospel,
so that we may share in the blessings of the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
God, we pray for your people and for your church
around the world and across the ages.
We pray with gratitude for all
who worship you on this holy day.
May your Holy Spirit make us
one even as we are already one in Christ.
We pray for all the Mennonite related churches of the
world.
May we listen to and learn
from the great faith
of our sisters and brothers around the world.
We pray for Mennonite World Conference and her
leaders,
especially for Larry Miller and Doris Dube,
for Mesach Kriseteya and
Nancy Heisey
and for all who have responsibility for the gathering of
Mennonites in
Give them wisdom and
compassion in their responsibilities.
We pray for the churches and
leaders in
in gracious and passionate
hospitality inviting Mennonites to come and worship
and to share gifts in
suffering and joy as your people the church
and your body of Christ.
We pray for a special measure of your wisdom and
blessing
upon Doreen and Mary and all of us next weekend
in our Vision retreat.
Give
us clarity of vision for what you have set before us.
Give
us compassion and gentleness calling forth your word from each other
So that we might hear your Word beyond our words.
We pray for the leaders of the nations that they may
make wise and just decisions.
Fill them with vision and
compassion
so that they might be makers-of-peace rather than
wagers-of-war.
We pray again today that by your open hand you stay
the clenched fists of war,
especially from our own nation.
God, make clear in us that our every “Yes” holds a
“No” and our every “No” holds a “Yes.”
Give us a deep sense of your
“Yes” and your “No” already living within us
so that they might become your Word and our witness to
the world.
Make of all who pray to you, O God, a true people of God,
people who acknowledge and live the mystery
and wonder of being
created in your image
and who see in the
neighbor and the enemy
another person created in
your image.
For we have known
and we have heard what you spoken from the beginning
through
the mouth of your prophet Isaiah whose Holy Word we hear again today.
This
day again we worship you and we proclaim with steadfast hope and
courage:
They who wait for upon the LORD shall renew their
strength,
they shall
mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and
not be weary,
they
shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40:31
Let it be, O God, let it be. Amen.