How to Pray for Your Pastor

Article by Melton Duncan, a ruling elder at Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, S.C. (original source here)

When Roman legions invaded Caledonia (modern-day Scotland) in the late first century AD, it was said by the historian Tacitus that the powerful Celtic chieftain Calgacus emerged and rallied his tribes against the might of Rome, famously declaring, “They make a desert, and they call it peace.”

Today’s Christian pastor is likewise making similar stands for biblical Christianity in the midst of a secular desert created by an anti-Christian culture. The Bible describes a faithful pastor as an elder who oversees the flock and the household of God. According to Paul, pastor/elders rule the church (Titus 1:5) and guard the treasures of Christ (v. 9). Additionally, they minister to the people by teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16).

If ever there was an era in Christian history that believers should be committed to praying for their pastors, it is now. James rebukes our prayerlessness when he says, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). And what prayers are we offering up to God on behalf of our pastors? Let me suggest several.

THAT HE WOULD DELIGHT IN PREACHING

If your minister is not being blessed and instructed by the Word, it is highly unlikely that you will be. Your spiritual well-being is directly linked to your pastor’s seeking the Lord in his preparation for the sacred desk. If he is not diligently seeking the Lord, you won’t find Him in his preaching either.

A godly pastor is a joyful, dutiful herald of the most high King. His enthusiasm for proclaiming God’s Word will be infectious and unstoppable, and it will be readily apparent to all who hear him that this is a man who knows his God. Second Timothy 4:1–2 reads:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

THAT HE WOULD ENJOY THE LORD’S WAY

I suspect that many people who sit week after week in the pews of their particular church have no idea how difficult a Sunday is for a minister and his family. Pray for your pastor’s Sundays. Robert Murray M’Cheyne says: “A well-spent sabbath we feel to be a day of heaven upon earth. … We love to rise early on that morning, and to sit up late, that we may have a long day with God.”

THAT HE WOULD LEAD HIS FAMILY WELL

Pray that God would help your pastor in the midst of busyness to taste and see that the Lord is good. Pray that his children would grow up loved and cherished in the household of faith. Joel Beeke says: “Family worship is the foundation of child rearing. As family worship goes, so will go the family. The Puritans thought family worship was the whole backbone of society.” We read in Deuteronomy 6:4–7:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

THAT HE WOULD HAVE A HEART FOR THE LOST

May your pastor have a Christlike love for the lost and a joy in telling others about the Shepherd-King. If a man loves the Lord, he will love telling others the old story of the gospel. He also will teach and model for others a renewed sense of evangelism and mission. He is worthy to receive the glory and honor due Him (Rev. 4:11). Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, is worthy to receive the reward. We need our pastors to have a zeal for the lost.

THAT THE LORD WOULD PROTECT HIM

A growing personal relationship with Christ will supply the motivation and zeal needed for a pastor’s duty to God. It will be tiring. It will require an all-in, total commitment. Pray that God would provide every physical and emotional need for the call to serve. Pastors are often subject spiritual temptation, so pray for God to protect these men from the evil one. Pray that they would guard themselves and be granted personal holiness. Pray that they would apply the means of grace to their own hearts, by God’s help.

THAT HE WOULD PREACH THE GOSPEL

Thomas Smyth of the antebellum historic Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, S.C., once charged a young pastor by saying:

Preaching is your pre-eminent employment, so the Gospel is the sum and substance of your preaching—the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation.

Necessity is laid upon you, yea, woe is unto you if you preach not the Gospel. … Preach Christ as set forth in the Gospel—the sum and substance of God’s testimony, and the author of eternal salvation to all who believe upon him.

Preach—this glorious Gospel of good news—first and last, every way, and everywhere, in public and in private; in the pulpit and by the press; to the living and to the dying; to the lost and the saved.

Pray for your pastor, pray as if your very life and those you love depended upon it.

2 Hour Interview Later Today

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America: How Far We Have Strayed…

Written by friend Eric Bryant today:

Those that know me know that I have started teaching the US Constitution more directly this year. I love it! Our founding fathers were geniuses. And the hand of God is all over our country’s founding. It’s clear for anyone with eyes to see. By no means am I saying that this is a “Christian country.” But it’s historical truth that the Founding was based on Judeo-Christian principles that acknowledge a Creator and that Creator’s laws of nature. The more we suppress that knowledge the worse we get.

When I teach about the Founding, it’s always bittersweet. We have such a great foundation and good beginning. We then went through hell with the Civil War and purgatory with the racial civil rights movement. It took a long time, but I’m proud that we eventually got to the point of actual legal racial equality and that the basis for all of that was written into our founding documents.

But the modern era is an era of foolishness unparalleled and unprecedented. We have squandered our blessings and we now openly spit in God’s face by not only killing the innocent unborn and calling it good but adding to it the hubris that says that we know more about ourselves than God does. This comes in the form of the ridiculous and suicidal attempts to change foundational human institutions like marriage. Same sex mirage is just that: a fiction that has no basis in reality. We think that we are the smartest people that have ever walked the planet and that somehow we can improve what was instituted from the beginning of humanity. And the US Supreme Court is the biggest fool of all (because they should have known better). What a pity!

That’s NOT what the Founders thought. Although, they were clear that they were trying a “grand experiment,” they were going back to basics, back to fundamentals, not forward to fiction and fantasy. They were standing on the truth that freedom comes through acknowledging that all men are created equal and endowed by our creator with unalienable rights, namely to life, liberty, and property. And that government is instituted to secure and protect those rights. How far astray we’ve gone.

It’s easy to celebrate the Founding. It’s hard to celebrate anything current going on in politics or the government. We are like the prodigal son, living in excess and squandering our inheritance, oblivious to the squalor that awaits us, but mostly awaits our children. It’s disgusting. The only rational response to this is to fall on our faces and beg forgiveness and mercy from the One who grants or takes away our freedoms. We can’t expect to violate the very laws of nature and then be blessed. That’s insane. Yet it seems as if insanity rules the hearts and minds of the populace today.

Happy Independence Day! Now beg God for mercy and call our country to repentance!