Father God,

Today, I pray for the pastors of our nation who carry the burden of shepherding Your People. I pray that You would keep them true to Your Word both in the details of what they proclaim and true to proclaiming Your whole Word for All of Life. I pray that they would not only preach Truth but live out Truth in their lives. I pray that they would not only live Truth in their own lives, but would live as true shepherds, loving the sheep in body and spirit such that the sheep of their flocks would flourish.

As I pray for the true shepherds to grow in their Christ likeness, I also pray against those who stand in the roles but pervert the role as wolves. I pray against those who preach falsehoods in details. I pray against those who steal from the Truth by denying its power and extent. I pray against those who feed off the sheep rather than feed them.

I pray that You would raise up and lift up the true earthly shepherds, equipping them to bless Your People. I pray that You would reveal the false shepherds and remove their influence over Your People.

ln Christ’s Name,

Amen.

Father God,

Today, I pray Isaiah 51:9, that You would awake, awake and Your Mighty Arm would act again as of old when You struck Rahab of Egypt. Though we know that You have never for a moment slept in keeping Your promises, never forgotten Your covenant promises to Your children, still now we call upon You to act as if You just awoke to remembering Your duty to uphold those promises that You might act swiftly.

We call upon You to act with urgency and with the power that is wholly within Your being. We call upon You to strike down the Rahabs of today, the dragons of the day, anything that comes against Your people in heaven or on earth. Give us victory over the enemy which seeks our overthrow, which seeks our taking our eyes off You, which seeks to deceive.

Awake, awake and be our God who has promised our daily bread, our Rock, our Strong Tower, our Hope, our Lord, our Savior, our All-in-all. Grant that we may see Your Power at work in our deliverance.

In Christ’s Name,

Amen.

Father God,

Today, I pray for the weary, for those who press into each morning, still bearing the brunt of the prior days, still looking upon the future as filled with unresolved storms and trials. I pray for the spirit who longs for a small spring in the midst of their long desert. I pray for the one climbing the mountain who longs for a breather in the midst of the ascent that comes with a ledge on which to rest.

I therefore pray for all those who see such a dark shadow behind them and dark shadows expected ahead that they may not even know where to go next from exhaustion and loss of direction. Remind each of them in the deepest parts of their souls that their Lord has promised to provide through all their storms and is faithful to finish their desert journeys and their dark storms.

Remind us all, Oh Lord, in the midst of the weary darkness that the storm is only fleeting in Your eternal plan. Your goodness and steadfastness will overtake and outlast the suffering of the present. Give each of us the strength to persevere under the burden of our storms.

In Christ’s Name,

Amen.

Father God,

Today, I pray against the fingers of the enemy which press into the lives of Your children through the fallenness of creation, through the physical dysfunction that pervades our world until Christ’s return. We so look forward to the time when there are no more tears of suffering for there will be no more suffering. There will be no more infection, no more toxicity, no more lacking of anything our new bodies need.

Until then, we walk in bodies that are far from impervious to such threats, but instead have both a strength and a fragility. In the order of Your having created us, our bodies are designed to resist, to endure, to overcome. In the aftermath of the Fall, these same bodies are subject to the effects of the enemy’s work in physical as well as spiritual suffering. We walk in an ever ongoing battle between the properly created strength and the Fall-imposed fragility.

Between those two out-workings, we walk in faith that our Redeemer lives to ultimately deliver our souls, but to also provide for our bodies as the Great Physician. We read time and time again of the Lord’s meeting physical needs and the Arm of the Lord providing physical needs and the Servant providing physical needs. Let us hope in those promises as well as in the spiritual deliverances.

As we put our highest hope in the salvation promised and fulfilled in Christ, let us also remember to hope in He who promised to care for our bodies during this earthly walk of life. Let Your Hand meet us in our physical needs today and deliver us from the enemy’s multitude of fingers pressing upon our fragility.

In Christ’s Name,

Amen.

Father God,

Today, I pray that we would be good stewards of our received gifts from Your Hand. Both from a natural creation and from a supernatural salvation standpoint, we have been blessed with so much from You.

I pray that we would take what You have given us in terms of earthly talents, knowledge, and skills and use it for Your glory, for Your work, and for the blessing of others. I pray that we would take the gift of salvation and press into the sanctification of our souls such that we would be refined and become more and more in the image of God in man.

I pray that as the days pass, our likeness to Christ in obedience and fruitfulness would increase. I pray that living waters of salvation would fill us and overflow outward in blessings to all those around us. In this, I pray that we would diminish such that You would receive all the glory of the fruits.

In Christ’s Name,

Amen.

Father God,

Today, I pray that we would remember Isaiah 51:1-3 as we walk in Your Ways through paths of darkness. As we walk through our own waste places, wildernesses, and deserts of today, it is easy to despair, especially if we forget verse 3, or the following verses. Remind us of 51:12 that our salvation is secured by “I am”, the “I am” who comforts us.

Remind us that our waste places, our wildernesses, our deserts do not determine our final resting and are not the end of the story. They are but participation with the experience of the Servant of the chapters leading up to 51, that our faith might be manifest and proven. They are not the end, but the means to the comfort of “I am”, to the Eden that is promised, to the garden of the Lord out of the desert of our life. They will finish in the joy and gladness of the Lord with thanksgiving and song.

For those who walk in darkness today, may each and every one of You know that you are not alone in the darkness if You belong to the “I am”. May you also know that the darkness is not your end. Your Lord will finish your story according to His steadfast faithfulness.

In Christ’s Name,

Amen.

(for past prayers you can visit www.wholepersonwholelife.com )

Father God,

Today, I pray that we would heed the call of Isaiah 50:10 to trust in the Name of the LORD, even when we walk in darkness. Just before this verse we read of the faithfulness of both the Servant and the Lord. The Servant submits to the suffering of His appointed task, yet waits with confidence in the Lord’s promises to vindicate Him, to sustain Him, and to complete the work through Him.

In verse 11, we read of those who rely on their own strength and how they will lie down in torment. This torment comes both in the present when fear engulfs every moment for those who believe it all depends on their efforts and in the time when one faces the final outcome that self-sufficiency was doomed to failure in eternity.

In verse 10, between these bookends, darkness and absence of one’s own guiding light is not a reason to despair, but a reason to look to the One who holds all things in His Hands and on whom we can rely. Just as the Servant submits to the Lord in restful assurance of the Lord’s final work, we are to rest in the faithfulness of the Lord rather than our own strength.

Let us respond in faith to these words today.

In Christ’s Name,

Amen.

Father God,

Today, I pray that we would be like the Servant in Isaiah 50:4 who submits to the instruction of the Word each morning so that we may walk as a disciple and console the weary. I pray that we would not be like Zion in the surrounding verses who rebelled against Your Word, questioned Your motives and methods, and would not hear the Word spoken to them.

Walking as a disciple as the Servant does in daily hearing and submitting to the Word is not something we can do in our own strength. We need the Spirit that You placed within us to walk in union with Christ, the Servant, to walk as the true Zion, the true people of God. Enable us to imitate Christ in His obedience to the Word and to the Word-Giver.

Then let that Word, which saturates us morning by morning, pour out as living water to the weary in our midst. Let the consolation of the Word not finish its effects solely in us, but let us be driven to share that consolation with as many around us as we have opportunity. May the living water quench the thirst of others as we share what we have been mercifully given as a precious gift.

In Christ’s Name,

Amen.

Father God,

Today I pray for spiritual eyes that see the working of Your hands in our lives so that the weary may be encouraged during the long storms. Though our lives are as a fleeting wind upon this earth, coming and going as time continues unhindered, to us our walk seems long in longsuffering. We have to endure the fallenness of this world day in and day out. We become tired as we wait for Your hand to move in whatever way we need it.

In this present world, it is easy to focus just on the things that are seen, seeing the outworking of the Fall not only in nature, but even more so in our own hearts and in the relationships between the fallen. Cause us to see with spiritual eyes how You are weaving all things together for good, how You are working to provide and protect Your children, and how You are continually guiding all things down to the smallest details of our lives. Give us peace in knowing that our heavenly Father knows our needs, our heart’s desires, our struggles and more.

Let Your Word and Your Spirit preserve us in confidence of Your ever present love and mercy in our lives.

In Christ’s Name,

Amen.

Father God,

Today, I pray for those who are mourning. So many have suffered loss in some form or another. We hear on the news of children’s deaths. We hear from friends of returning cancer that takes away security. We hear from others of unexpected lawsuits. We hear of our patients’ broken lives where years have been stolen by illness.

What we hear from those whose lives we touch are only a drop in an ocean of mourning that Your people experience upon this fallen earth. Were we to see as You do all the mourning in its entirety we would be crushed.

Lift us up that we might walk with those who are suffering and mourning. Let Your Strength work through us as Your Hands and Feet to those who mourn. Let the comfort You give and have given us be a comfort to those who now walk in the paths of mourning. Restore joy by Your presence through our shared tears.

In Christ’s Name,

Amen.