Please find below the notes from the Elder's Prayer this past Sunday.

This weekend has been our annual DNOW event for our student ministry called Grounded Student Ministry or GSM. It has been great weekend. The Ministry of the word has been excellent. Our Student Leaders have seized countless opportunities to deepen discipleship relationships with the students.

Thankfully, numerous church members have served our students to make this weekend possible. From opening up your homes, to caring for leader kids, to feeding 65 people since Friday night, let me simply say thank you church family. This event doesn’t happen without the body eagerly helping out.

Our student ministry is committed to magnifying God and making disciples of Jesus Christ of our students. We are not an island or a separate entity where 7-12th graders go. The opposite is our aim. We are a part of the church and we want students and adults alike to see that clearly. Our mission is perfectly aligned with the church’s work. We are motivated to come alongside parents in discipling their children. We strive to do this through preaching and teaching, discipling, partnering with parents and praying. This is neither radical or creative. We are simply trying to be faithful to the call placed on all saints – go and make disciples. We just don’t have to travel as far as some.

My prayer this morning is going to be focused on praying for our student ministry. Church family, let me encourage you to regularly pray similar themes for our church’s ministry to students and their parents. You will note, the themes are not dissimilar to how adults might pray for each other.

Let’s pray

Heavenly Father, I pray our church will see ministry to our students as work for all of the saints to join in and not just a few. I pray our church will seek to engage our students in conversations about the word and purposefully pursue gospel focused relationships. God, I pray our members will increasingly see our students as evangelistic opportunities within the walls of our church. I pray too that our church will love and support the parents of students. That they will seek to encourage and come alongside parents in meaningful and discipling ways.

Father I pray too for those you have called to serve as leaders in our student ministry. I’m grateful to you for raising up 19 adults from our church who are involved weekly in teaching and discipling our students. I praise you for them. I praise you that their love for Christ and his church motivates them to sacrificially invest in our young people. I pray you will protect them. Protect them from growing weary in doing good. Protect them from discouragement when the fruit of their labor might be hard to discern. Protect them becoming disheartened when students seem to reject or ignore the biblical counsel they offer. I pray you will protect our leaders from disqualifying sin. None of us are immune to this kind of failing. I ask for your protecting grace on our leaders. I pray you will humble us. Make us more dependent on you. Cause us to fear you more and love you more deeply so that sin might not entice us, that sin will lose its appeal and attraction. I pray as our leaders love the savior more, their love to serve our students would grow likewise.

Father I pray too for our parents. The love for their son or daughter is profound. They want nothing more than to see their kids pursue Christ with reckless abandon and enjoy the grace of salvation. As the primary disciplers of their children, I pray parents will embrace their spiritual calling to instruct and admonish their kids. I pray our parents will be most concerned about heart changes as opposed to behavioral changes. I pray you will guard our parents from the sinful temptation of comparison. I pray our parents would model confidence in Christ during all circumstance demonstrating a trust in both the authority and sufficiency of your word. I pray too that our parents will welcome the sanctifying grace that parenting roles play in shaping them into greater Christ likeness.

Father I pray for our students. I humbly ask that you will save those who are lost and grow those in Christlikeness who are your followers. I pray they will recognize their sin and grow in their hatred of it. I pray their fear of you would grow while the fear of their friends would dwindle. I pray they will consistently and faithfully obey your word. I pray they will know the biblical blessings of assurance and peace and joy knowing you are pleased with obedience and also anticipate your promised future reward for such submission. I pray they would know the freedom and liberty only found in abiding in Christ. I pray they would be devoted to you and their lifestyles and priorities would reveal that reality. I pray they will see the sin of showing partiality as sinning against you and inviting your judgement. I pray they would be marked by compassion and grace towards others recognizing the abundant mercy you have shown them. I pray our students will see mental ascension to facts or affirmation of biblical truth as insufficient for salvation. Knowledge alone will not save them. I pray our students will see truth in their head does not equal salvation in their heart. I pray our students will see that you are more interested in their hearts than what’s in their head. I pray our students will have genuine faith that is alive, active, vibrant, growing, infectious, zealous and is evidenced and visible through their good works.

Father help our church, our student leaders, our parents and our students to trust in you to accomplish what only you can accomplish. For by grace you save through faith. This is not our doing, but a gift from our heavenly father. Please do this work in our students so they might do the good works you have prepared for them to walk in.