7.16.23 Prayers of Church & Community, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

 Prayers of Church & Community, July 16, 2023

Westminster Presbyterian Church

God of Creation and Cross, we thank you for the wonders of your world, the power of love - to love, and to be loved, and the glory of your Christ, the little one of Bethlehem, the man of the road, the healer and the teacher, who bore the Cross to Calvary, and gave up his life, to face down the demons of hell and death.

Thanks be to you, Eternal God, for our new Elders: Barbara Barrett, Lee Powers, and Susan Sulak … bless them, keep them, guide them and guard them, as they take up the burdens and joys of leadership … 

Thanks be to you, Eternal God, for our new Search Committee … its quest, its search, its decisions … we pray for the new minister, whoever it will be, wherever she or he is … that even now, your Holy Spirit is at work, preparing someone’s heart for this momentous task, this moment in time, this church, our church, with it all of its hopes and dreams.

Today, O God, I pray for young adults, young families … I pray your Holy Spirit to protect them from the allure of cheap religion, religion with too little of Christ, and too much of self … religion pumped up by technology and entertainment, loud and funny with too much energy and too little purpose … spiritually thin and spiritually weak … give us all, we pray, the greater wisdom, to sort out the false from the real, the lie from the truth, the authentic from the counterfeit … to see the living Christ, high and lifted up … to hear his voice, the call to discipleship, to leave ourselves behind to gain the truest self we can be.

Holy God, strengthen us for the days ahead … keep our hearts sensitive to the cries of the many, all around the world … those deprived of home and hope, victims of war and famine, pestilence and injustice … give us the eyes of Christ, give his us compassion and his purpose, that we might be the light of the world and the salt of the earth.

We pray for the writers and actors on strike … we pray for the studios and all the other elements affected by the turmoil. We pray women and men of good conscience to prevail - that wages and benefits be appropriate, the drive for profits be tempered by the requirements of justice. Save us, we pray, from  the God of Mammon.

We pray for our families, our friends … our immediate world, O LORD - work and school, home and neighborhood … we pray for our communities, civic associations, fraternal organizations … for school boards and book clubs and governing bodies … for the mundane and the magnificent … for all who seek the greater good, who strive for the high ideals of faith, hope, and love.

All of this, in the name of our LORD Jesus Christ who taught us to pray, saying:

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 debts as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.