Let’s pray together this morning.

Father, what a blessing the local church is. The local church is how You are accomplishing Your purposes in the world right now, and it is a blessing to Your people. It is where You equip Your people to do the work of ministry that You’ve called them to do. It’s where we gather together to worship, to serve, to be edified and equipped. It is where Your Word is heralded, where Your Word is proclaimed to the glory of Your name for the salvation of sinners and the sanctification of saints.

And what a joy it is to serve in the local church. What a joy it is to have a church that serves so well and so faithfully. Lord, that’s not just a mark of a community of people like the world that serves one another. This is a mark of Your Spirit in our midst. Service is a gift of the Spirit. You, by Your sovereign Spirit, bestow upon Your people a gift of service to serve one another, to love one another, to speak the truth in love to one another.

And it’s an undeserved privilege for us as a church to participate in what You are doing in our midst and in our world, in our community.

Lord, we thank You for Summit Woods Baptist Church. Lord, we thank You for what You are doing in our midst. Thank You for how You have instilled in us by Your grace such a view of Your Word that it is not merely a token that we acknowledge as Your Word, but Your Word is the authority that drives everything that we do—that shapes everything that we are, how we think, what we say, what we practice as a church, how we function as a church.

Lord, I thank You for how You have worked through Your church this weekend in the lives of these students. Thank You for how You have so worked by Your grace in the lives of so many people that they would so selflessly and sacrificially serve this group of students this weekend.

Thank You for those who opened up their homes so graciously to host our students, to feed them, to give them a place to sleep, and to provide a place of fellowship and friendship.

Thank You for those who prepared meals for us and served food for us this weekend. Lord, thank You for the time and effort that that takes—for their genuine desire to serve our students because they love them, because they love You, because they want to see Your name glorified in these students.

We thank You for those who led us in music—the time and preparation, the skills that You gave them to lead us in singing and praising Your name.

Father, I thank You for those in our midst who serve regularly in student ministry as small group leaders, as those who participate on the leadership team. Lord, I thank You for those people, the gift that they are to this church and to the families of these students. I thank You for their desire to disciple the students—to not just be here as chaperones but to invest in the lives of these students, to have difficult conversations with them, to pry into their hearts and their minds, to see their hearts and minds conformed to the image of Christ.

Thank You for the countless hours that they put in serving, praying for these students, investing in these students, spending time with them, taking vacation days to participate in student ministry events.

Lord, we thank You and we praise You for that.

Father, we pray for our students. We pray that by Your grace You would open their eyes to the beauty and the glory of Christ. We pray that they would see their sinfulness and their desperate need for salvation through Christ and Him alone.

We pray for those who do know You. We pray that by Your grace and the work of Your Spirit through Your Word they would grow in conformity to the image of Christ—that they would hate their sin and love Christ more. That Your Word would be the sufficient instrument to cause them to be complete, to cause them to grow in maturity in Christlikeness.

Father, we pray for our ministry to our students. We pray that we would faithfully continue to teach the Word, to preach Your sufficient Word. We pray that we would herald it not as entertainers, not as trying to be cool or relevant, but simply proclaiming the life-giving power of Your Word.

We know that the gospel is Your power for salvation for those who believe. So we pray that it would be effective through the ministry of this church and in the lives of these students.

We pray that we would model this, Lord—that we would be faithful examples of believing and living out the truth of Your Word.

Father, we pray for the parents of our students. We pray that in this season of parenting You would graciously give them wisdom for the myriads of ways and situations and circumstances and heart issues that are revealed during this time.

We pray for wisdom for our parents to know how to skillfully apply the truth of Your Word to the lives of their students—to call them to repentance and faith, to call them to holiness, to call them to Your holy standard.

Father, I pray that they would view this age of parenting not with dread or terror or as just a season to get through. But I pray that they would see this season of parenting as an opportunity.

I pray that they would see the hardships, the hard conversations, the pushing, the pulling, the trials, and the challenges of the teenage years as an opportunity to expose the hearts of their kids, to bring them to the truth of Your Word, to reveal and show them the sufficiency of Your Word and the beauty and the glory of Christ.

How Christ is so much better. How You are so much better than the things of this world.

As the students are feeling the tension of the call of Christ and the call to discipleship, as they’re also hearing the call of the world and their own flesh, I pray that their parents—and that we—would hold forth Christ as more beautiful, as better, as more satisfying.

I pray that the students would hear that call and see the beauty of Christ.

Father, we pray for us as a church that we would continue to faithfully labor in the lives of our students. I pray that the whole church would see this as not just the ministry of some, but that this is simply what we do as a church and how we relate to one another.

Would You cause us to more faithfully engage with one another from top to bottom—not just the people who look like us, not just the people who are in our age group. We pray that we would engage with each other across the board in our congregation and that we would speak the truth in love to one another and encourage one another, including our students.

I pray that members of our church would regularly engage our students. Lord, would You so work to give that heart to those in our congregation that they would simply seek to engage young people as they see them walking around here—asking them what they’re reading or how they’re walking before the Lord.

Would You so do that work in our midst that we would see You glorified in the next generation?

We pray that Your grace would be effective to accomplish all of these things and so much more for the glory of Your name.

It’s in Christ’s name that we pray. Amen.