Tag: Prayer

A Prayer For Restoration

Benevolent and Sovereign God

Would you not see the needs of thy people for thy name’s sake? See the exposure of your remnant and rise up, O Lord, to defend thy people. By thy mighty Spirit cleanse thy Church that we might once again be a set apart vessel that thou is pleased to dwell in. Deliver us from false Shepherds and wolves in our midst. Raise up again stalwart men to defend thy honor and name and to care for the tender lambs of thy Holy flock.

Set loose the tongues of those that serve you to speak in earnestness and authority. Grant, to them not only the minds to think your thoughts after you but then also the oratory to be convincing or condemning before men as you please.

Sovereign God, we confess that we are worthy of your Chastening. We have played the part of the harlot and our affections have been spent on those things that can not satisfy. But, O Sovereign God, in thy just chastening, remember mercy. For thy name’s sake keep thy people that they might once again sing the glories of thy covenant faithfulness.

Arise, O Lord Christ, and renew thy Church. For the good of thy own name let not thy people go into eclipse or to become a reputation against you. Cleanse us O Lord, and equip us again to be your agents and ambassadors in a World that desperately needs the Witness of Christ in its midst.

Give us confidence again to believe that Scripture is knowable and is a sure and certain Word against man’s word of flux.

We are shut up unto you Protector Sovereign. We have no place left to turn. The hour is late. If you will not turn us we will not be turned.

Come quickly to renew us Lord Christ

Amen

Luther On Imprecatory Prayer

We should pray that our enemies be converted and become our friends, and if not, that their doing and designing be bound to fail and have no success and that their persons perish rather than the Gospel and the Kingdom of Christ.

– Martin Luther

If we are serious when we pray “thy Kingdom come” then by necessity we need to pray that those Kingdoms that oppose the Lord Christ and the people who animate those satanic Kingdoms would be destroyed. Naturally, when we pray that way our immediate desire is that God’s enemies would be converted so that they would become His friends. However, as Luther notes above, if the enemies of God kick against the goads and refuse to repent then it is in keeping with the Lord’s Prayer (thy Kingdom come) that we pray that God would remove them from their positions of influence even if doing so means that they perish. Kings and all men must Kiss the Son lest the Son be angry and they perish in the way.

Still, we earnestly hope and pray that God would grant them life from the dead.

In our prayer life let’s not let our sentimentalism get in the way of the advance of God’s Kingdom.

Wedding Prayer

Dread Sovereign and Benevolent God, thou who art the creator and preserver of all life, author of salvation and giver of all grace, we beseech thee that thou would look with favor upon thy Church that Christ did Redeem and especially upon this man and woman who are members of thine covenant and who are now entering in the Holy State of matrimony which you have ordained to be a model of Christ’s love for His Church.

Grant them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of the life that you have ordained for them to share that they may each be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy.

Grant, we beseech thee, that their wills and affections may be so knit together in your will and affections that they may grow steadily in love, thus experiencing the peace and tranquility that you intend for domestic life. Pour out upon them thy Holy Spirit so that they may together with all God’s people grow up in the grace and knowledge of thy Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through all the years that lay before them.

Open their eyes and grant them grace that they may see when they hurt each other, and then cause them to recognize and acknowledge their sin and to seek each other’s forgiveness and yours.

Make their life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, so that their unity may be evangelism to the world’s estrangement, their acts of forgiveness a testimony to the world’s brokenness, their joy a witness to the world’s despair.

Bestow upon them, if it is your will, the gift and heritage of children, and the grace to bring them up to know you that they and their generations that follow may constitute a Holy Host unto the God of Hosts to be used for your bidding for the advancement of your cause.

Grant them the prayers of thy people attendant here and grant that they may join their own prayers with these, your people, that your name might be seen as to be majestic as it never ceases to be.

Fix them within a community of faith where all can be sharpened to think your thoughts after you. Grant them the fellowship of like-minded believers that together your community may take every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

And then Father, when their days come to an end, and their descendants gather around them to extend their last visitations here, gather Anthony and Rachel to hear thy pronouncement of “Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter now into thy Master’s rest.”

Grant them and all of us to live all our lives before thy face.

In the glorious name of the Resurrected and Triumphant Christ

Amen