{"id":59630,"date":"2023-04-09T00:00:14","date_gmt":"2023-04-09T05:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=59630"},"modified":"2023-04-09T00:06:44","modified_gmt":"2023-04-09T05:06:44","slug":"a-prayer-for-our-pastors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=59630","title":{"rendered":"A Prayer for Our Pastors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What a joy and what a blessing it is to pray for our spiritual leaders\u2014to ask God to bless them, to sanctify them, and to equip them for the ministry he calls them to. This prayer by John Flavel (as found in Tim Chester&#8217;s <em>Into His Presence<\/em>) offers words we can pray on their behalf.<\/p>\n<p>Lord, cleanse our churches, and repair their walls, so they may become gardens of delight for Christ to walk in and take pleasure in.\u00a0May her ministers be faithful and wise: faithful so they do not deceive others; wise so they do not deceive themselves.\u00a0May their wisdom prevent deceivers imposing on them, and their faithfulness prevent them imposing on others.\u00a0May their wisdom enable them to discern wholesome food for the flock\u00a0and their faithfulness oblige them to distribute it.<\/p>\n<p>May our leaders be pure\u00a0with spiritual aims and intentions;\u00a0serving not their own honour and interest, but yours.<\/p>\n<p>May our leaders show sincerity, not appearing outwardly spiritual while being inwardly carnal.<\/p>\n<p>May our leaders be diligent, like men in harvest,\u00a0like women in labour, like soldiers in battle,\u00a0watching while others sleep.<\/p>\n<p>May our leaders lack favouritism,\u00a0as those who will appear before an impartial God.\u00a0May they take the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a joy and what a blessing it is to pray for our spiritual leaders\u2014to ask God to bless them, to sanctify them, and to equip them for the ministry he calls them to. This prayer by John Flavel (as found in Tim Chester\u2019s Into His Presence) offers words we can pray on their behalf. Lord, cleanse our churches, and repair their walls, so they may become gardens of delight for Christ to walk in and take pleasure in.\u00a0May her \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":59633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[304,116,809],"class_list":["post-59630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tim-challies","tag-pastors","tag-prayer","tag-quotes","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/ben-white-mO9vKbG5csg-unsplash-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C633&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59630"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59635,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59630\/revisions\/59635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/59633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}