Elder's Prayer

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

These words in Isaiah (Isaiah 43:1-7) are primarily for God’s OT people, for those of the southern kingdom, Judah, and for the northern kingdom, Israel. God promises to be with them during their affliction. As other nations rule over them, God reminds them that they are his people and he will deliver them from her enemies.

Remember that God was saying to these people that weren’t listening to him, they were not obeying him, that’s why they were under the rule of other nations. But God had chosen them and made promises to them and he will fulfill those promises.

A few verses later, God reminds them again of who he is:

I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior…I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back?

This God who cares for Israel is the same God that we worship this morning. He is the God that we rest in, the God that we delight in, the God that we trust in.

Let me encourage you to not only remember what God has done for Israel, but remember what God has done for you. Remember how God regularly supplies what we need, how he restores us when we are weary, and how leads us and comforts us. 

(Prayer)

You alone are God, the Holy One, the only savior. You are our rock and our salvation, our delight, our reward. You are righteous and merciful, holy and loving.

You formed us, you called us, you made us your friends. You will never forget us.

You have blotted out our sins, you have cast them away, for your own sake, you will remember them no more. Where we once were red as crimson, you have made us white as snow.

You are the Lord, the one who formed us, the one who made all things, the one alone who stretched out the heavens, the one who spread out the earth by himself.

You pour out your Spirit on your people. You pour out your blessing on those you call your own.

You have proven your character over and over and over again. You are the Lord, and there is no other. Besides you, there is no god. 

Amen.