Pastoral Prayer for April 16, 2023

(Please allow the words of this prayer to become your own.)

Lord Jesus,

Today, I pray that you would help me to know the power of your resurrection.

Help me to know it not just factually but in my deepest being.

May your resurrection rise in me, Lord Christ.

May it live in my very bones.

Give me faith in this astonishing reality:

because you overcame death, you can overcome anything.

Scripture says that your resurrection was “the first fruits” –

the early part of the harvest.

I ask for more harvest.

More fruit where so far there has been little or none.

More new life springing up where all seems dead and gone.

In your grace, bring your amazing resurrection power to my loved ones today.

Bring new life to those who struggle with illness, disability, despair,

and addiction.

Bring new life to those who survive on the edges of society –

to the homeless, the mentally ill, the forgotten elderly and incapacitated,

the refugee, the incarcerated.

Bring new life to my enemies.

Rise, Living Lord, in all of us.

Amen.