My Prayer Request

I was asked this week to give some people a list of my prayer requests. This was my response to the request.

I was humbled to learn that some folks in the congregation want to pray and fast for me for the next 40 days.
I am thankful for this sacrifice of their time and their willingness to go before our Heavenly Father on my behalf.

I was also asked to make a list of some of my prayer requests…and I thought I could jot down a few items on the sheet of paper and send them along. My medical chart seems to be growing by the week―that alone could keep these good folks praying for 40 days. I have two teenage sons (another 40 days); a wife tired of the health concerns of her husband (40 more); etc….
But are those my most pressing needs?

The more time I thought about this― (Wasn’t this supposed to be a few scribbles on a note pad? It is quickly beginning to rival War and Peace.)―the more I realized that my most pressing need is not my health or even my family. Not even close.

If I am going to continue to lead a great church like Central, if I want to be the best husband and dad that I can possibly be for Karla and the boys, then here is my request:

I want to be closer to God. I want to hunger and thirst for Him. I want to crave the word of God. I want to covet spending time with Him. I want to see things as God sees them. I want to have my heart break when I see someone hurting or broken or troubled. I want to have a deeper passion for the lost. I want to better notice the lonely. I want to see the disabled through new eyes. I want to have the same urgency to pray for the confused teenager as I seem to have to pray for an oversized kidney stone.

So that’s my list…
Yes, I have health issues.
Yes, I want my marriage to be a God- honoring and growing relationship.
Yes, my boys are constantly on my mind to make good choices.
Of course, I would love it if the church worries were never a worry.
Certainly, I pray that our brand new newlywed class would grow and for those couples to get rooted early in their married years to Christ.
No doubt I need help in all the other pastoral duties that I carry—providing vision for a church, managing a pastoral staff, putting together sermons, counseling individuals, managing a church budget in a tough economy, on and on I could go…

But what I really need, what I must have—I want the Holy Spirit to be so consuming of who that I am―that when I speak or act or lead or am at a doctor’s appointment or a school conference or the check-out line at Wal-Mart―that the people I encounter will see Jesus in me. Always. Only. Jesus.

Pastor Rob