In addition to feature talks, interviews and sermons, on this podcast I sometimes include prayers that I’ve led during worship services.

What I’ve discovered is that there is a great hunger for prayer. Prayer seems simple enough, but it can sometimes be deceptively difficulty—at least if we want to be sincere in what we are doing as we come before a God who is, at the same time, righteous, loving, almighty, holy, and close.

In his book about prayer, Tim Keller writes: “Prayer is awe, intimacy, struggle—yet the way to reality.”[i] He goes on to say further: “Prayer is simply connecting Jesus to your absolute helplessness, your sense of fragility and dependence.”[ii]

The prayer I’m about to share with you is from the closing worship service at the General Assembly of my denomination. I was invited to participate by the preacher, and a friend of mine, Joe Bae of Vaughn Community Church. The instrumentation in the background is from Jonathan Cho, Josh Kim and the praise team at St. Timothy Presbyterian Church in Etobicoke, Ontario.

“Prayer is awe, intimacy, struggle—yet the way to reality.”

Let’s pray:

Lord God the Almighty, you are a corpse-raising God.
Dust into flesh.
Hope rising from pools of violent blood.
In you all things are actually possible.
Where we are stubborn and self-centred—you are wise.
Where we are foggy and distracted—you are steadfast.
Jesus, remember us (All: When you come into your kingdom)

Come, Holy Spirit.
Shatter our strategic plans and schemes
when they don’t align with the flight of your will.
So often we manoeuvre and doubt and decide—
as if the tomb was full, not empty.
Turn down the noise in our ears
and the disobedient cries from within
that are so at home in our flesh,
and re-calibrate our hearts.
Bring us into alignment with the frequency of a Father
who showers generosity on a world worth dying for.
Jesus, remember us (All: When you come into your kingdom)

Give us the kind of hope that inflates our hearts with Christlike courage
in the face of a scheming, cocky adversary, the deceiving one.
Give us the kind of hope that drips—no, oozes—from our churches
with food for the hungry,
healing for the fractured,
liberation for the demonized,
friendship for the lonely,
truth for a new generation who long to live under a banner that matters.
Give us such hope in the days to come
that it will soar unhindered from our churches, households, and hearts—
all for the glory of a shepherd who never sleeps
in the cause of his lambs and kingdom.
Jesus, remember us (All: When you come into your kingdom)

All these things we pray in the name of Jesus Christ—
raised ruling, renovating, soon to return, Amen.

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[i] Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York: Dutton, 2014), 32.
[ii] Ibid., 128.