Today I offer to you the final part of Pulpit Prayers by David C. Fisher of the Oxboro Evangelical Free Church in Bloomington, Minnesota. If you missed the first and second parts, please go here and here to read them, then return to this post.
Pulpit Prayers
With trembling voice I began. The words and emotions poured out as I loved God’s people before his throne.
“O Father,” I said, “you know us so very well. We kneel before you with vast and varied needs. Some are crushed, bruised or broken. May your wounded heart respond with compassion to your beloved children. Heal our broken hearts. Strengthen our frail spirits. Enlighten our impoverished minds. Help us to grasp your grace in Jesus Christ.
“Others stand before you filled with joy. Loosen our tongues to sing your praise. Help us, like the paralytic at the temple, to walk, leap, and praise your name….”
These people had captured my heart. Strangers but a short time ago, now they were my friends, my people. They had opened their lives and asked me in. They had taught me about life, shared the joys of birth and the pain of parenting. I had watched sickeness and death steal the lives of people I loved. I had felt the ache of their loneliness and listened to soaring hopes and shattered dreams, significant success and tragic failure. And I saw growth, excitement, spiritual formation. I, too, had opened my life and asked them in. And they had helped me, joining me in triumph and growth.
That Sunday, seminary abstractions took on flesh and blood. The doctrine of the church lived before my eyes. Prayer moved from pastoral routine to throbbing reality. I never again would see people the same way. My prayers were changed forever.
I suppose I learned to pray that day. I discovered that intercessory prayer has nothing to do with a list of names, but everything to do with bearing soul and grit to God’s throne.
I learned, too, that if my heart is moved by the passion of God’s people, the divine heart of God is moved beyond measure. I see but a speck of life; God knows it all. He’s been here. He’s one of us. Really!
God answered my prayers that day. People were touched by the presence and power of God. We began to become a church where needs were met and lives put back together.
Thank you for letting me share this with you this week. My heart has been reminded to look past the exterior of people that we see with our natural eyes. Instead we need to look with heaven’s eyes and see that we are shaking the hands of people whose hearts may be ripped to shreds and desperately need our love and compassion. You and I have no idea what is going on behind that Sunday morning smile!!
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