Prayers of the Church, 6.19.16

God of all, we marvel at the beauty of your world.  Even with all its blemishes and scars, it is a majestic creation. 

And even though we are part of it, even though we are surrounded by it, many of us fail to see the world’s grandeur.  Instead, many of us see your world through the lens of addiction.

Regardless of the cause, our addictions can get in the way of serving you, of doing your will.  Our addictions can hurt those around us.   

Help us be honest with where we are, Lord.  Help us look starkly at ourselves and see the challenges we face.  At the same time, let us not be overcome by what we see, what we realize.  Do not let us be overcome by guilt and shame.  Instead, allow us to remember that you love us supremely and that you have made our imperfect lives white as snow in the name of our savior, Jesus Christ.

Forgive us for the hurt we cause others, and allow them to experience forgiveness for us, too.

If we fail, when we back-slide, remind us that you are there for us always, with open arms, calling us back to you.

Give us the gift of perseverance – to carry on, and to continue our efforts to be more Christ-like, even in with our feelings of inadequacy.  Help us ever strive to break the chains of bondage that often stand in the way of allowing us to do your will.

Thank you for our Christian family – our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.  Help us open ourselves up to them and allow them to surround us with love, just like the love that Jesus showed to us.

Help us move forward without fear, focusing our lives on service to your world, loving those around us, and glorifying you with our words and our deeds.

In the silence, gracious God, hear us.

Hear our cries, O God.  Listen to our prayers.

And now we pray together, as a family, the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray:

Prayers of the Church, 6.5.16

Great and majestic Lord,

We come before you today grateful for your limitless love and thankful for your unending grace.  Our actions or inaction would most certainly cause an earthly king to question our loyalty, to consider turning us away.

Selfish desire makes us prone to wander.

Hardship makes us prone to leave the God we love.

We grieve for loss.  We lament the passing of people and things we love.  In our sorrow, we can believe that you don’t exist, and in our mourning even worse – that this is what you are really like – the God of pain.

In our pain, people can try to comfort us with the consolations of religion.  We don’t want or need that!  We need Jesus Christ, not something that resembles Him. We need the close embrace of Christ-like brothers and sisters who will nurture us and point us toward the cross.

Help us remember the resurrection.  Help us remember you are the God of love – a love so deep that you gave up what you loved most for people like us.

In the silence, Father, hear our prayers of loss…….and hear our prayers of thanksgiving that your love is the only love that is pure, unselfish, and totally full of the grace that saves us.

Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.

And now we pray together the prayer that Jesus taught us:  

Prayers of the Church, 2.7.16

No longer slaves to sin.

Lord, that is our prayer as we come before you today… that we are no longer slaves to sin.  Help us embrace the gift of your son, the gift of our baptism -- our cleansing -- and the grace that they represent and that has truly set us free.

We are slaves to sin because we are slaves to ourselves, our typically selfish wants and desires…

We think we can love, when the love we think we are experiencing is really all about us.

We think we can serve when the act of service is really about us and about us feeling good about what we’ve done.

We think we can live Godly lives when the purpose of such lives is really so we can control our goodness and show others how wonderful we are.

Free us from this sin, Lord.  Wash us clean.  Put us down in the water, Father; hold us down until we shed our love of self to such a great degree that the love of Christ is all that is left.

Set us free from the sin of loving ourselves too much or hating ourselves the same.  Regardless, the focus is on us and not your kingdom.

In the silence, Father, bathe us in your presence, cleanse us with your spirit.

You call us to seek first the kingdom of God.  Help us be Christ-like as we seek your kingdom.  Help us be Christ-like as we love our neighbors and even more so our enemies.  Help us be Christ-like as we dig in and get mixed up with the messiness of this world in your name.

In the name of Jesus, we ask that we love as Jesus loves.

In the name of Jesus, we call upon you to help us seek your kingdom above all else and then follow where that focus leads.

In the name of Jesus, we cry out to you, O Lord.  Cleanse us.  Help us commit ourselves to you.

Allow us to trust you to move forward, not relying on ourselves, but in the one who set us free by his death, burial and resurrection…Help us remember our baptisms.  Help us remember when we were still so focused on pleasing you. 

Help us understand your freedom, the freedom that is ours through your grace and the sacrifice of your son who taught us to pray: