Our Holy Father and our God, we give You thanks for this day You have given us. We thank You for the beauty of this place you have set us in, where we see Your glory writ large upon sky and mountain, river and field. We thank You for the families You have blessed us with, as husbands for the wives you have given us, as wives for husbands, as parents for the olive trees you have set around our tables, and as children for the parents you have given us to. We thank You for the strength and skills we have been given as men, that allow us to labor to sustain and maintain our households. We thank You for the gifts, talents and skills you have given the wives and mothers in this congregation, with which they beautify, glorify and sustain life in our homes. We thank you for the strength you have given our sons, that they might in turn labor to sustain and maintain households, and for the spirit You have placed in our daughters, that they might follow their mothers and be fruitful vines in the households you place them in.
We thank You for the physical provision of our homes, of food on our tables, of roofs over our heads, of vehicles, gasoline, electricity, water, and all those things which sustain our lives. We give You thanks for safe travels completed, and travels to come.
We thank you for Your gracious providence, both sweet and hard. We thank You as our Heavenly and Holy Father, for the ways in which You succor us and form us, for the times of comfort and the times of chastisement.
We thank You for hearing our prayers, for condescending to hear our insufficient thanks and our seemingly endless petitions. Hear, O God, and stretch out Your mighty right arm in our defense and aid.
For those we love who have strayed, or have never claimed Christ we pray that you would change hearts and minds, that they would turn or return to Christ, that they would be blest with repentance and forgiveness.
We pray that by Holy Spirit we, as a church, would be found faithful. Faithful in our attendance, faithful in our giving, faithful in our Bible-reading, faithful in our prayers, faithful in our fellowship, faithful in our care-giving. Give us eager ears and hearts to hear Your word read and preached, eager hands and feet to serve within and without. May Christ’s whole church, this church, Palouse Fellowship, our sister churches in Knox Presbytery, the CREC, and Christ’s whole church-bride be found faithful and, where it is not, may it be disciplined to come to faithfulness or shuttered by Your hand.
For those among us with physical infirmities we pray for Your sustaining strength and for healing. For F and B that they would be relieved of pain in back and neck. For R that he would be sustained in health. For H that he would be given all those things he needs to loose his tongue and integrate with life around him.
For those among us carrying infants in the womb we pray for safe pregnancies, safe deliveries, healthy mother and healthy baby.
As we begin another political season we ask that You would give us the government we need, and not the one we deserve. May those who claim Christ vote, and vote with that as their guide. May those who govern, elected, appointed and employed, be brought to saving faith in Christ, and may the governing of this land and all lands conform to Your law. May the spectre of abortion be removed from among us. May the knowledge of the Lord cover the whole earth as the waters cover the seas.
We understand, O God, that none of these things for which we thank You come of their own. None of that for which we ask could be ours through our own power or means. All of these, and the infinite blessings we receive, are ours solely through Your grace and favor. And we are thankful for that grace and favor which are ours solely through Your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. He has bought us back from sin and death by His work finished on the cross of Calvary. It is only in Him that there is salvation, only in Him that there is healing, only in Him that there is life. We thank You, His Father and our Father, His God and our God, for the salvation wrought, for the reconciliation You have brought between us and Yourself through the blood of the cross. We are thankful, O God, as thankful as we can be, yet not as thankful as we should be. And we thank You that a day will come when we will join those souls the righteous made perfect, when our praise to You will be made perfect as well.
O LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Livin' in the foothills 