April 23 Prayer Ministries

Dear Heavenly Father, help our journey to the cross be intentional and prayer filled even through our pain, our doubts, our questions and our searching. Help us deepen our commitment to you by living a christian life. May our prayers and actions not be centered on our needs, but be focused towards meeting the needs and concerns of others.

• May these final days leading up to the tragedy of Good Friday and the glory of Resurrection Sunday remind us of who you are, how you love us, and that you have created us to be your followers.

• Bless all who are involved with the Cantata as they tell your Easter story through music.

• Fill our church this Easter with all who yearn to hear and celebrate Easter. May they be filled with your love and leave with renewed faith and hope in you.

• Bless this congregation and all who worship among us. May we draw closer to you and to look to your son, Jesus as an example of his great love and sacrifice. We know that when many hearts and hands work for you, great things can be accomplished in your name. We lift in prayer every member of our congregation that you might open their hearts to give and received your love.

• We ask your presence with those youth of our congregation who are communing with us for the first time. May they experience the joy of sharing the Lord’s supper with fellow believers.

• Thank you for all who will be involved with “Feed my Starving Children”. Help them realize that when many hands come together, how easy and fun it is to package meals that will provide food and nutri- tion for thousands of people in this world who have little or nothing to eat.

• Heal the sick, comfort the grieving, bring peace to the dying and companionship to the lonely. Be with all who suffer. We especially pray for those who are on our prayer network and named in our church prayers.

• As the weather warms and the snow melts, so will be the return of our Snow Birds. We ask you to watch over them and give them safe travel as they return to us.

• Be with our synod representatives, Pastor Josh and all who are involved in our NE Synod Assembly the weekend of April 28th. Guide their discussions. Let any decisions that are made, fall within your plans for your churches within this Synod.

• Guide our youth ministry program. Be with our leaders as they plan ministry activities and programs that will help grow our youth in their faith. May we continue to reach, nurture and share your word with them, their friends and other youth in the community.

• Bring warmth to your earth so farmers can begin their spring planting early. Grant favorable weather so crops and food supplies will grow and be abundant this year.

• We thank you for bringing new life to our congregation. We thank you for the many new members and baptisms within this church. Continue to grow them in their faith and to lead them in ways that they can serve you through the various programs and activities that we have to offer.
  

As we listen for your voice in all that we seek to accomplish, help us to be still and to hear you speak to us. Guide our ways and keep us from our busy-ness that pulls us away from serving you. Amen

Lord, is the world really lost? Hardly anybody thinks so. Can we be lost and not know it? How can you save a world that does not need it or want it? Did you hang on a cross for nothing? We are pondering such things these days. If our hearts did not remind us, the calendar did. It seems no different now than it was when the prophet spoke or when the soldiers pounded nails though your flesh. The world is not impressed. They have gotten used to blood and pain. Yours does not look any different. You are one among many and some deserve what they get. How did our evil put you on a cross? No jury would ever convict us. But our hearts do and so we confess again our own fault, our own most grievous faults. Yet you forgive us, every last one. That is what we want to tell the world.

—from Real Prayers by Wendell Frerichs

Children’s Prayer Time Dear Jesus, whenever I think of Easter, I am reminded of how much you love me. Help me to share that love by being kind and helpful to my family and friends. Amen.