Prayers

What We Live (Ephesians 6:10-20)

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Your teachings give us strength every day, Lord.
The world we face each day can challenge us,
with temptations,
with doubt and uncertainty,
with false promises and fear.
We don’t have a set of physical armor
to wrap ourselves in each morning.
But we lean on your teachings, on your guidance,
and we know that you are with us always.

Your teachings give us strength every day, Lord.
You taught us with more than words,
you lived your life as you would have us live ours.
To love one another without hesitation or judgment,
to speak up for those among us who have no voice,
to share freely with each other,
and to support one another within your community of believers.

Evil exists in our world, because we, as humans, make bad choices.
You gave us free will and it is up to us to make this world
as it is in your heaven.
Give us the wisdom to make better choices,
the strength to resist temptation,
the ability to recognize and to follow your guidance,
and to open our hearts so that we can love each other freely.

Your teachings give us strength every day, Lord.
We lift up our fears, our worries, and our failures to you
knowing that you are with us,
knowing that you have surrounded us with your love and grace,
knowing that we are your children and that we are loved.
We ask that you be with those among us who need your love and support,
naming __.
Remind us every day that we are your disciples on this earth.
We may not have physical armor that protects us from harm,
but we are surrounded by your presence, by your love and grace.

Your teachings give us strength every day, Lord.
And we use the words that you taught us, as we lift our voices together, to say
“Our Father…”

Be Love (James 1:17-27)

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Father God, you gave us your son.
Your son who showed love with his every action
and his every thought.
Help us to do the same.
Remind us that our thoughts shape our actions.
Our thoughts of judgment may keep us
from reaching out a helping hand.
Our thoughts of fear may keep us
isolated and alone.
Remind us to filter our thoughts
through the lens of love.

God of light and love,
fill us with the warmth of your presence.
Open our ears to your teachings,
open our hearts to your desires, and
open our eyes to truly see the people around us.
Mold us into the people you want us to become.
Help us to put your teachings
into action in this world.
Give us the strength and the wisdom to make our world,
your world here on Earth.

God of truth and wisdom,
remind us that faith and understanding
should be demonstrated in acts of doing.
Bless us in our work here on earth.
Forgive us when we struggle to love one another,
and be with us when we seek to make amends
to those we have hurt.
Open our eyes to the pain of those around us and
give us the strength to comfort and help one another.
We ask that you be with __ in the upcoming days and weeks
and we lift up our concerns to you.

Mother God, you have given us many gifts.
Each of us is deeply loved and uniquely cherished by you.
In addition to the gift of truth, you have given us the gift of laughter
and the gift of celebration.
You have given us the gift of relationships and
we know that we are stronger when we come together
as your children, as brothers and sisters in Christ.
As you find joy in each of us, help us to see that same joy in one another.
Remind us to enjoy the life you have given us.
Remind us to use our gifts to help one another
and to make this world a better place.
As we lifted up our concerns, we also lift up our joys
in praise and thanksgiving.

Father God, you gave us your son.
Your son who showed love with his every action
and his every thought.
Your son who gave us the words we use today,
“Our Father…”

UCC Identity

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Prayers marked with the category UCC Identity were used in a series after Pentacost in 2015. Each week was spent on a sentence in the UCC graphic of Be The Church. Our children and youth created their own banner over the ten week series with their own symbols representing each of the concepts below.  The youth presented a topic during the children’s sermon each week.

BeTheChurch-VerticalBanner-3

Reach Out to Us (Matthew 2:1-12)

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God of all Grace,
You find many ways to reach out to us.
Through our preparation for the Christmas season,
we have seen you find ways
to touch people of faith,
to touch a humble teenager in the middle of nowhere,
to touch a roaming band of shepherds,
and, now three Magi who bring gifts from afar.
The Magi were not Jewish and were from a different culture,
and yet they helped bring the news of the gift of your son.

God of all Grace,
You find many ways to reach out to us.
You reach out to us in our daily lives,
using the events of our lives to share yourself with us.
When we are fearful, you are with us to give us strength.
When we celebrate our accomplishments, you share in our joy.
When we hear devastating news, you are with us to comfort us and
to bring us hope.
When we see unfairness and injustice in our world,
you give us the strength to fight for peace and justice.
You are with us always.
Open our hearts so that we feel your presence and desire to follow you.

God of all Grace,
as our Creator, you gave us free will.
That free will allows us to make bad choices,
choices based in fear and selfishness.
Open our eyes so we can see our choices more clearly;
help us to make better choices, choices that follow your plan.
Make us more like the Magi, and less like Herod.
Help us to share our gifts freely and to listen to your teachings.
Reach out to us in ways we may not expect.
Touch us in ways that deepen our faith.
Speak to us in our dreams and in the silence of the night.
Question our choices when we fail to live up to your desired path.

God of all Grace,
You find many ways to reach out to us.
We know that you are with us always.
We ask that you be with __, members of our faith community,
who need your extra grace and healing touch.
Reach out to them, surround them with your healing light and
embrace them in your love.
Strengthen them as they face their challenges.
And, strengthen us, as your community.
We feel your presence among us.
And, as you reach out to us, we also reach out to you,
using the words your Son taught us,
“Our Father…”

Your Healing Touch (Mark 7:24-37)

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God of light and love,
We confess that even when we think we are treating people fairly,
our actions may be tainted by our biases and by our interpretations.
Overwhelmed by the world and desiring privacy,
it can be easy for us to turn a cold eye to the needs of those around us.
It can be easy for us to judge others and blame them for their situation.
Fill our lives with your light, illuminate the shadows of our lives,
and show us what we are not seeing clearly.
Let your light show us the grays in our life,
those spaces where the decisions are not always black and white
and then let your love help us to make the right decision.
As you fill us with your love and light, remind us that we are loved
and heal us as you healed others.
Let the energy of your love fill us with every breath we take.

We gather here in this sacred place.
For the next few minutes, be with us as we sit quietly
and we ask for your healing touch,
for ourselves,
for those that we love, and
for those that we know of but may never meet.
As we breathe in, we feel the energy of your love,
drawn into ourselves,
touching every part of us,
healing what is broken and in pain.
As we breath out, we feel ourselves expanding,
expanding out to unite with one another,
becoming one with each other,
here in this sacred place.

God of light and love,
Open our hearts with your love, help us to share our love and our lives
with people who are not always first in our minds.
Your son showed us this love and compassion when he helped the
Syrophoenican woman, a person some would call an enemy.
As your children, we are loved deeply and uniquely cherished.
Help us to see your face in those that we meet and
help us to extend your gift of healing to others.
We may not be able to cast away their demons,
but we can lend our ears to hear their stories,
we can lend our hands to help pick them up,
and we can use our voices to stand up for them.
Your son came to us in love and
taught us how to truly care for your creation.
And in love, he taught us the words we use today,
“Our Father…”

Are We Acting as Your Followers? (Mark 8:27-38)

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Who do we say that you are?
What brings us here each week?
Where do we see you touching our lives?
When are we most like you?
How do we show that we are your followers?

Do we ever really think about these questions?
Open our eyes, Creator God, to your love and to our answers.
You sent your Son to us, as one of us, but also as part of you.
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
separate but yet connected.
Sharing your Son with us was sharing your love with us
in the physical form.
Do we see your Son as love? as a teacher? as a prophet?
as a Savior?

We come here every week to this sacred place.
What brings us to this place, to this family of believers?

Open our hearts to your desires.
Help us to work together as your church
to fulfill your plan.
Help us to discern your plan for Church of the Apostles.

As your children, we know you are with us always.
Creator God, you see us as we are and how you would like us to be.
Open our eyes to the times
that you have tried to coax us to follow your teachings more closely.
Open our eyes to the times
that you have supported us in our times of crisis.
As we support each other, we know that you are with us and
we ask that you be with ___ in particular.

We are your children, Lord, and we try to follow your teachings.
As we look at our daily lives, open our eyes to when we are acting in ways
that are most like you.
Use us to fulfill your plan here on earth.
Remind us that we are your followers and it is up to us
to speak for those without a voice,
to listen for the unspoken needs,
to shelter the refugee,
to feed the hungry,
to teach those who cannot read,
and to love the discarded.
As we look at our personal lives, when are we acting most like you?
When are we acting as your disciples, your followers?

Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was.
Remind us every day who Jesus was and why we follow him.
And as we remember, we use the words he taught us,
“Our Father…”

We Are Connected (Mark 12:38-44)

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Gracious God, we may not want to admit it,
but we are more like the scribe than the widow.
We dress our children in the latest fashions and
upgrade to the newest iPhone.
But we don’t think about the child who may be working
in those factories overseas to give us our latest gadgets
and our athletic wear.
We say we want to protect the environment,
but our constant need for energy depletes the rain forest
and poisons the water.
We put our needs before the needs of others.

Help us to be more aware, Lord.
Help us to see how we are connected with one another,
with nature, and with you, Lord.
Help us to see how our private and our public choices
impact each other, impact our world,
and impact our relationship with you, our Creator.
Help us to remember we affect people we will never know
and will never see.
Help us to put ourselves in someone’s story,
to hear their circumstances without judgment
and to see your image in their face.

Creator God, you created a world that contains all we need.
Remind us that our gifts and treasures are not a reflection of our faith,
but more a reflection on the circumstance of our birth
and our ability to make our way in a material world.
As your disciples shared their gifts and talents with the early church,
so too, are we to share with each other.
Help us to see the inequities of this world
and give us the strength to stand up for justice and peace.
Use us to fulfill your plan here on earth.
Fill our hearts with the desire to follow the examples of your Son, Jesus.

Remind us that being a church does not only mean gathering together
in this sacred place.
Being a church means taking our message out to the world,
in deeds more than in words,
showing others your love and your grace.
Help us to be more like the Widow,
give us the strength to give ourselves freely to each other,
without fear, and without doubt.

We know that you are with us always.
And, we know that faith alone does not guarantee us a pain-free life,
but we know that with your presence, and with the help of each other,
we can be supported and comforted in this world.
We ask for your healing presence for those among us who need it the most.
We name ___

As the widow, we come to this sacred place, and together,
we use the words that your son taught us:
“Our Father…”

God of Creation (Genesis 1:1-28)

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Creator God, in our darkest moments,
we know that the sun will rise in the morning from the east
and set in the west.
We have witnessed the beauty of those sunrises,
have marveled at the vast numbers of stars in the sky in the dark of night,
and have been humbled at least once in our lives
by the majesty of the world you have given us.
The world you have given to us is full of what we need
with more than enough for all of us.
Remind us not to take more than our fair share.

We have witnessed the beauty of the world you have given to us.
We have also witnessed the harm that we have caused your world.
We remember the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico,
the Kuwait oil fires from the Iraq war, the dead zone within the Chesapeake Bay,
Three Mile Island, the damage done to third world countries who have
the minerals or natural products that we want and far too many other examples to name.
Remind us that as you made the world, you created us, in your image.
Creator God, help us to act as your images here on earth.
As you have nurtured us, give us the wisdom and guidance
to nurture our earth, the world you have given to us.

God of the sunrise and the sunset, you are with us always.
We find you in the noise of the crashing waves against the shore and
we find you in the stillness of the darkest night.
We find you in the beauty of a bee dancing against a flower and
in the morning dew sparkling on a spider web.
We marvel at your creation as we look at the face of a newborn baby
and we recognize the cycle of life as we say good bye to those we love.
In today’s modern world, we can live our lives seemingly disconnected with nature.
Remind us that our lives are intertwined with nature
and that our actions impact your world directly.

Created in your image, we know that we are your children, Lord.
We are to support one another and work to fulfill your plan here on earth.
As we are to nurture the earth, we are also to nurture each other.
We know that you are with us always, and
we ask that you be with those among us who need you the most.
We name ___

As the God of Creation, you are with us every moment of every day.
Help us to feel your presence with us and within us.
Remind us to celebrate the simple pleasures of the world around us.
Remind us to value all aspects of nature.
And, as members of your creation, hear us as we lift our voices to you,
using the words your Son taught us,
“Our Father…”

Why Is Life Unfair? (Mark 10:46-52)

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As we look at the world around us,
we see much disparity.
Why do some have so much and others so little?
Why are some who practice bad habits, healthy and strong,
while innocent children face illness and pain?
Why does the drunk driver kill someone else other than himself?

Remind us that you are always with us,
but also remind us that our reality is not a litmus test of our faith.
A strong faith does not guarantee us a world full of riches and rainbows,
but our faith will help us get through those dark and lonely nights.
Our faith will help us get through the news that a loved one has cancer,
that a job has been lost, or that our child has made a bad choice.
It is our faith that has brought us to this place, to this community,
to this sacred place.
Our community of believers stand with each other,
supporting one another in times of need,
celebrating our special occasions and individual achievements,
lifting up those who need support,
healing those who are in pain,
and grieving with those who mourn.
That is what you have taught us,
that we are your children,
that we are to be your church.

We follow you, Father, and try to walk in the way of your Son.
He shared your love with us and
we know that we need to share our love with others.
Part of that love is to care for those among us
who have less than they need, for whatever reason.
Open our eyes to the need around us.
Open our ears to the call of those like Bartimaeus who
cry out for assistance.
Open our hearts to your plan, to your desires.
We ask that you use us, that you help us experience your call.
Help us to stand up, to throw off our cloak, and to follow you.

We follow you, Father, and we know that you are with us always.
Your Spirit moves among us, silently urging us in ways we don’t understand
and may never realize.
You are with us, and we ask that you especially be with ___.
Help us to realize that our only privilege in this world is that we are your people.
We are loved by you; we are your children.
While we will always face challenges in our lives, we know that you are always with us.

As Bartimaeus cried out to you, we also cry out to you and we know that we are loved
and that you hear our cries.
As your children, we raise our voices using the words your Son taught us,
“Our Father..”

Happily After (Mark 10:2-16)

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Gracious God, we all long for that happy ever after.
We have ideas about how life should be,
dreams of what could be, and, hopes for what will be.
As children, we learned to crawl and then to walk,
but understood we might fall down and
would need to pick ourselves back up.
As we grow older, picking ourselves up and
dusting ourselves off becomes harder.

Through our lives,
we have learned that it is our relationships that define us.
that strengthen us, that stretch us, and shape us,
our relationship with you and our relationship with others.
It is our relationships that will help us pick ourselves up when we fall.
And it is our relationships, sometimes, that cause us to fall.
Thank you, Teacher God, for the people you have brought into our lives,
friends we have know for years and others who are around only for days or months,
people who taught us love and people who brought conflict to our lives.
We were to know each of them and they were to know us.
Your son taught us the power of relationships,
bringing people together to fulfill your plan.
You are the one constant in our lives. We know that you are with us always.
Be with those among us who need to be comforted and to feel your healing touch,
we name __ in particular and ask that you be with them

Forgiving God, we have all faced the disappointments of life.
We have disappointed others and we have been disappointed.
Our dreams about what could be sometimes fall short.
We have learned the couple on the top of the wedding cake
does not always live happily ever after.

As your church, we come together to support each other, to learn from each other,
and to celebrate the love you have shared with us.
As you have shown forgiveness and understanding to us,
we are to share that love with those around us.
Help us to open our hearts to those around us.
Remind us to focus on developing our relationship with each other,

and our relationship with you, Gracious God.

Remind us to partner with one another, to strengthen the bonds between us.

We have ideas about how life should be,
dreams of what could be, and, hopes for what will be.
Remind us that our reality is up to us.

Together we are your church, and as spouses work together and create a partnership in marriage,

so must we work together to make this world your world here on earth.

As your children, we lift our voices together, using the words that your Son taught us,

“Our Father…”