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

Our Father,

Despite our physical weaknesses, despite our constant infirmities, despite the present, inescapable decay of our physical bodies, We do not lose heart. We rejoice in you.

Despite the wasting away of the outer man, by your grace our inner man is being renewed day after day. Our physical health is failing, that does not change. But our spiritual vitality is growing.

Day after day as we experience the afflictions of this life, we anticipate the eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. We look not with physical eyes, we look not toward temporal things.

Help us by your grace to not look to temporal solutions to life’s problems. Help us not to cling to and clamor after the things of the world, the good of our physical bodies while we neglect the health of our souls. Help us to look with eyes of faith Toward what our eyes can’t see. Toward what is eternal.

Father we long for the day when we you complete the work you began in us. We long for the day when we are free from sin, free from this decaying body.

Help us to be a courageous people, preferring to be absent from the body and at home with You. Make it our ambition to be pleasing to you. In the fear of God motivate our hearts to persuade others to the truth of the gospel.

Might the love of Christ control us. Might we faithfully, zealously live for Him who died for us and not for ourselves. Might we no longer view others according to the flesh, according to what is merely physical and earthly. Might we see one another according to our new nature in Christ. Might we together be ambassadors for Christ, messengers of reconciliation.

You have through Christ reconciled us to yourself – you made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in Him – might we long to see your reconciling work done in our families, amongst our friends, in our neighborhoods, at our workplaces.

Even here today, Father. We pray, we implore you to do your reconciling work. Perhaps there is a heart here that longs to know the affections of a Father who will never let them go and so might those here who have not been reconciled to you through the substitutionary death of your Son, turn from their sin, fix their faith on Christ receive the righteousness of God and no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them.

It's in Christ’s name we pray, amen.