Weekly Prayers for the Church Street Family
Week of July 13, 2022
Rev. Tim Best
Friends in Christ, God invites us to hold the needs of our sisters and brothers, as dear to us as our own needs. Loving our neighbors as ourselves, we offer our thanksgivings and our petitions on behalf of the church and the world:
Gracious God we give you thanks for the wisdom and knowledge you have poured out upon us through your church. We are thankful for minds that wonder and souls that search for you. Guide our learning and our teaching that through it all you might be made known and glorified. Where our knowledge is lacking and our wisdom deficient, strengthen and nurture our spirits and minds by your wise and loving grace.
We pray for our neighbors. For those neighbors whom we know well and cherish we are thankful; For those neighbors that we do not know or that make us fearful we pray that your Holy Spirit would teach us to love and learn alongside them and from them, giving us eyes to see the gifts that you have given to each of them. May we truly live as those rescued from the power of darkness and live peaceably with all our neighbors in sure confidence that the kingdom of your beloved Son is a reality for us here and now.
We lift all of those who suffer, are alone, or are in any kind of trouble, to your care. Comfort and heal those we hold in our hearts and grant them courage and hope the midst of their troubles, and bring them the joy of your salvation. May your Spirit draw close to those who mourn and those who feel distant from you. Draw each of us closer to your heart, as we name so many gifts that have brought us joy, and also name the specific concerns of your people of Church Street UMC:
- Thankful for prayers: Pathology report shows no cancer cells
- Aunt grateful for prayers: Healthy nephew born on Tuesday
- Gratitude: Commissioning of 3 new Stephen Ministers & 2 Stephen Ministry Leaders
- Thanksgiving for stellar worship experiences
- Celebrating successful Children’s Choir Camp this week
- Family celebrates birth of healthy baby boy, appreciates prayers for both newborn and mother with gestational diabetes
- Family thankful for the gentle death of a beloved father on Sunday
- Young mother with shingles appreciates prayers – now healed
- Grateful for our Youth involved in outreach ministry in Knoxville this week – “Making a Difference in the City”
- Courage for member with dementia at home and her family
- Healing of member in assisted living recovering from surgery
- Prayers for friend in failing health, having surgery July 13
- Endurance and peace for all families in mourning
- Leaders of all nations, that they might work for the good of the people
- Prayers for ending the killing and evil destruction within Ukraine
- Spiritual intervention needed: A mother and twin children in dilemma
- Please pray for dear friend (age 40) diagnosed with breast cancer
- One in deep depression, for insurance to pay for his medications
- Sustaining of member in longterm cancer treatment at home
- Families deeply desiring children
- Peace for one who feels as if God is not answering his prayers
- Brothers & sisters around the globe enduring hardships due to flood and famine, victims of natural disasters and exploitation, for unselfish hearts to rise up, helping and healing
- Prayers for families grieving violent losses of innocent children
- God’s care for a brother in skill nursing facility & strength for his family caregivers
- Hope and healing for a mother with advanced eye disease
- A new job for a son in a healthy environment
- Continued courage for mother entering chemotherapy
- A family in grief – have been shunned by their rural church
God of salvation, who sent your Son to seek out and save what is lost, hear our prayers on behalf of those who are lost in our day, receiving all our petitions and thanksgivings with your unending compassion as we join offer the prayer that Jesus taught:
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.
