Sunday, October 19, 2014
Offered by Victoria G. Curtiss, Associate Pastor

Loving God, you have called us to be your instruments, and we desire to fulfill your call. We offer you our time, our energy, our skills and passions, and especially our desire to be laborers in your harvest. Since you have chosen the weak things of this world, help us wrap our heads around the fact that you choose to work through us and that you will provide all that we need to be faithful to you. We cannot by ourselves bring your gospel to humankind. Grant us, we pray, not to offer our own words and actions, but your word and deed by which men and women, children and youth, may come to know you and love you.

Help us to take to heart the situation of those around us, to act as neighbors toward them, to share with them what you have given us. We do not ask to see the fruit of our labor. We want only to know that you are using us for your saving work and that your reign is coming among us.

We pray for all who are facing health challenges, including those vulnerable to Ebola, especially in western Africa, asking you to protect people from dying of this virus, to increase and strengthen medical workers responding to this crisis, and to comfort those whose loved ones have died. We also lift up Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. We pray for peace in these lands and an end to violence and all the reasons why so many refugees are fleeing to other lands. May your good news be known through us and others. Hear us now as we pray as Jesus taught, saying, Our Father . . .

(The second paragraph is partly based upon a prayer by Willem A. Visser ’t Hooft in A Book of Reformed Prayers, edited by Howard L. Rice and Lamar Williamson Jr.)

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church