At the start of the year, as your Senior Pastor, I would like to share with you my wish for this community that all of you are a part of. I would like to express my wish in the form of a prayer so that I can encourage you to join me in praying along the same line for if we humble ourselves before God and earnestly pray to him according to his will, surely he will hear our prayers and answer them in his own marvellous and mysterious ways.
Almighty God and gracious Father, we desire to be a worshipping community. We want to make Sunday worship a celebration service. We want to celebrate with great joy who you are and what you have done for us. We want to celebrate your being and doing. We praise you because your steadfast love never ceases, your mercies are new every morning and great is your faithfulness. Fill our hearts with thanksgiving and gratitude because you have created us and we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made. Fill our hearts with thanksgiving and gratitude for the salvation we have in Christ. Though we were once lost in our transgressions, you have made us alive in your Son. Fill our hearts with thanksgiving and gratitude for your sustenance, your provision and your protection as we traverse the uncertainties of life. May we be overflowing with so much joy when we gather each Sunday that we will sing enthusiastically to you from our hearts, fully participating in offering you the sacrifice of praise so that you may be pleased with the fruit of our lips. May we also sing enthusiastically to one another, exhorting and encouraging each other with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. We pray that we will submit to each other out of reverence for Christ as we worship together, looking to the interests of others rather than insisting on our rights. Fill us with your Holy Spirit. We want to come under the control and influence of your Spirit. We want to be guided by your Spirit. We yearn for your Spirit to speak your Word into our lives. We yearn for your Spirit to commune with our spirit. We want to worship you in spirit and truth. We want to encounter you, our imminent God! We claim upon the promise that if we seek you, we will find you when we seek you with all our hearts.
After we have worshipped you properly, missional God, send us out into the world to continue our faith journey. Help us to watch carefully how we walk – walking in love as Christ has loved us and walking as children of light, doing what is good and right and true. Fill us with your Holy Spirit again so that we will love you with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our might because you are the one and only and apart from you, there is none other. It is only right and fitting that we give you our total devotion and dedication. It is only right and fitting that our love for you far surpasses our love for other things and other people. Lord, we want to be consumed with you. Forgive us when we compartmentalise you, treating you merely as one of our many pursuits yet never putting you high on our priority list when in fact our whole life should be encompassed by you – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I want to repent. We want to repent. By your grace, enable us to be ever mindful of your presence so that in everything that we say, in everything that we do and even in everything that we think, we desire to please you and to glorify you. We want our lives to be aligned with your will as revealed to us in your Word. We know that sometimes this requires us to carry our cross which may not be comfortable and can even be painful – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. Give us the resolve to hate sin just as you hate it. Give us the resolve to put to death our sinful self. We want to be crucified with Christ. We want our old self to die. We want to experience the resurrected life in Christ which can be experienced right here and right now. We don’t need to wait till heaven beckons us. We are already a new creation. The old has gone. The new has come. We want the fruit of the Spirit to permeate our lives. We want to grow more and more like our Lord Jesus so that when people see us, they see Jesus, and wherever we go, we sweeten up every place with the fragrance of Jesus. May our lives be walking Gospels even as you embolden us to preach the Gospel in words. Lord, we know that we will never be perfect on this side of heaven but we thank you that even when we falter, forgiveness is always at hand, our salvation is already secured, and nothing can separate us from your love.
Abba Father, we pray that our lives can serve as a powerful testament to those who come behind us, our children and grandchildren, our nieces and nephews, our friends’ children, those who look up to us secretly to see whether we walk our talk. We know that actions speak louder than words and values are caught more than they are taught so Lord, help us to be authentic people, sharing our stories with the younger generation, our ups and downs, our victories and failures. As we open our lives to them, may they be encouraged by our transparency and may they be inspired by our steadfastness, that though we may not be perfect, we remain faithful to God throughout the different seasons of our lives. Give us grace to be consistent in our service regardless whether our children are young or old, whether we are healthy or sick, whether we are starting out in our job or otherwise. Let us be seen as those who are consistently reading your Word, constantly praying and never complaining, always fresh in our story telling about how you are continuously at work in our lives. Let us be role models for them, beacons of light drawing their attention to Jesus in this world of darkness where there are so many distractions luring them away from the Way of the King. I pray that you will fill your young ones with your Spirit and that they too will have a faith of their own, not one that is borrowed from their parents, and that they will rise up to be the next generation of disciples that are after your heart!
Gracious and merciful God, this is my wish for your church, and I believe my wish is within your will. And if we pray according to your will, you will hear us and if you hear us, we know that you will grant us what we ask for, what we wish for, for I wish all these in the name of Jesus my Saviour and Lord, amen!
Pray this prayer constantly with me, will you?
