Inaugural Prayer for Redeeming Grace Fellowship
Given on Sunday, September 20th in the Year of Our Lord 2015

Dear Lord,
Good and sovereign Creator of all that was, is, and will ever come to be,
Great orchestrator of man’s affairs,
Awesome provider of salvation and sanctification to those You have called,
We seek more than Your help on this day and all days to come,
We seek Your complete dictation of this current endeavor
And your thorough permeation of these lives you have chosen for it.

We acknowledge that it is by Your choice and Your working that any one of us would have the privilege to be included in Your divine plan of planting a church in an area of such great need for the Gospel.

We acknowledge that You are the planter, that You are the grower, that You are the harvester and that we are simply the stewards through whom You have chosen to work.

We ask, Lord, that you prevent any one of us from interfering with Your great work. Much to the contrary, that You empower us – not by our efforts, nor by our intelligence, nor by our resources – but by Your Holy Spirit working in and through us, to carry out your mission with all holiness, righteousness, and constant reliance on You.

Please do a supernatural knitting together of our hearts, our minds, and our families to your glory and for the advancement of your kingdom. Divinely cause us to be hospitable to all and to draw them into the saving arms of Christ, into authentic fellowship with the brethren, and into an accurate knowledge of Your Scriptures.

Lord, please establish and maintain an accentuated unity among the brethren of Redeeming Grace Fellowship and enable us to spread that to all who join our family.

Please guard our congregation from poor leadership, from false teachers, and from forces that would seek to divide us and mishandle the Word. Send us men who are true to Biblical truth, who rightly divide the Word, and who are capable of effectively teaching it to others. Send us men who are driven by your spirit to tend to the physical needs of our church and its members. Send us men who are honest and of highest integrity to handle the financial workings of our local body. Send us men and women who aggressively care for the wellbeing of our members and are skilled in duplicating Godly character in our young people.

Lord, raise up amongst us men and women who are skilled and driven to witness for Your name in both word and deed.

Give us maturity in our thinking and the ability to perceive all things from Your point of view. Give us maturity in our actions so that we may do the hard and uncomfortable things that are necessary for the advancement of the Gospel. Give us maturity in our commitment to our brethren, to our local body, to prayer, to evangelism, to every effort You have sovereignly designed for the purpose of carrying out your plan.

We pray for our pastor and our pastors to come, that you would grow each of them in Christ’s character, that you would protect their wives and children from forces that would seek to disrupt their families, that You would empower their wives to be excellent models for and disciplers of the women in the church, and that You would supernaturally occupy the hearts and minds of their children, causing them to be obedient to their parents and to become powerful leaders in the church as they grow.

Would you please enable each congregant to exercise their spiritual gift for the building up of this body. Grant each of us the joy of being gifted and used by You. Allow us to see the fruit of our labors in edifying the brethren and in reaching the lost.

We ask You Lord to plant us in the location that is of Your divine choosing. We ask that You would grant us the privilege of seeing many come to Christ through this ministry. We ask that You would indeed mold each of us into the people You would have us be for Your sake, for Your glory. We ask that you be the Sovereign Lord of all that we do in and through Redeeming Grace Fellowship. Will you please be our all-encompassing master, now and forever.

We acknowledge that it is by the blood of Christ, and that alone, that we are able to speak to you of such things. Lord, here we are, send us. Use us to bring Your message of salvation, to bring a proper handling of Your Word, and to bring an authentic and genuine love of Christ to a part of our nation that is in such desperate need.

And may we throughout this entire endeavor, for as many days as You would see fit for us to engage in this ministry, give to You and You alone all of the glory, all of the praise, all of the trust, and all of the honor. In Christ’s holy authority, we ask all these things. Amen!