Pastoral Prayer for the Sunday After Independence Day

Holy God:

On this week in which we celebrate the founding of the nation in which we live, we are especially grateful that our freedom to worship you according to the dictates of our own conscience is guaranteed in law. Forgive us for failing to realize how rare this privilege is in our world. We ask that you would strengthen and support our brothers and sisters who are singing your praises this day in places in which they must worship in secret and under threat. We also confess that we have too rarely taken advantage of our religious freedom—give us a heart to respond to you completely and to work for the drawing near of your eternal kingdom in our world.

You have told us to lift those in authority over us in prayer. And so we remember our President, Barack Obama, our governor, Robert Bentley, our Mayor, Al Kelly, and all our elected national, state, and local representatives. Help them to serve with honor and as servants of the public good rather than from personal ambition.

We also remember all who serve on our behalf in civic life—teachers, law enforcement,  fire and rescue workers, and civil servants. Especially we ask that you would protect and defend servicemen and women in harm’s way.

You have taught us to pray for our enemies, so we ask that you would bless those who curse us and make our enemies into friends. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem, for peace between the nations, and the strength to work for your promised day when swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, nation would not rise against nation, neither would they learn war anymore.

Many in our nation and throughout our world are suffering from economic troubles, so we ask that you would help us. Help each person who desires to work to find meaningful employment and the capacity to support their families with dignity.

Open our hearts on this, your day, to hear your word, to be shaped into your disciples, and to submit our lives wholly to your Lordship. Bring your healing to those we love and those of our family of faith who are sick, bereaved, and broken in spirit. Amen.