Monday, August 5, 2024

Sunday (August 4) Pastoral Prayer

August 4, 2024
Beulah UMC & Oak Grove UMC

Just as we are, we come before you, O God. We are your blessed, beloved, and beautiful children created in your image. We are your loved, gifted, and empowered people. We are your redeemed, called, forgiven, and claimed creations.

 

And we also come as broken, sinful, and in need of mercy followers of Jesus. We come with our prejudices, biases, and regrets. We come knowing that we have often fallen short of your glory.

 

Just as we are, we come before you, O God. You know us far better than we even know ourselves, and you promise to always love us unconditionally and completely. As the Apostle Paul writes, “nothing can ever separate us from your love in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing. Not even our own foolish, insensitive, hurtful, and selfish thoughts and actions. Just as we are, we come before you.

 

And so, with grateful hearts we renew our relationship with you this day as we continue to grow in what it means to love you and our neighbors as ourselves. We lift up to you those persons who are especially on our hearts and minds this day, those we have shared with one another here in worship this morning, the many names on our church’s prayer list, as well as those we may not know but who you know and are in need of your guiding, healing, and restoring love.

 

Thank you for the opportunity this morning to not only hear that you love us, but that we can also taste of your mercy and forgiveness by receiving the bread and the cup of Holy Communion. And thank you that every Sunday we come together for worship, we can come just as we are, confessing our sins, and hearing you say to us, “In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.”

 

Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way. Just as we are, we now pray the words that Jesus taught us to say together…

 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.


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