St. Nicolai Notes

Prayer for January 18-24, 2015

Sermon Texts: Philippians 2:1-11, Romans 15:1-9a, 1 Corinthians 1:10-17, 1 Peter 3:8-12

Prayer of Thanksgiving

God of compassion and mercy, we rejoice in you!

            You enable us

·        to accept each other so that you will be praised,

·        to bear with each other in our various weaknesses,

·        to abandon deceitful ways and speech,

·        to return good for evil and blessing for insult,

·        to move beyond selfishness and conceit in order to 

          value others and their interests,

·        to be sympathetic and compassionate toward one 

          another,

·        to assist and strengthen each other,

·        to serve one another as Jesus served each of us,

·        to love each other in humility,

·        to pursue peace together,

·        and to experience full healing and restoration of our 

          individual and corporate lives in unity with you.

You keep us from being distracted by allegiance to specific leaders when that allegiance distracts us from full devotion to Jesus Christ.

You encourage and give us endurance for practicing unity that is always more difficult than we can achieve by our own resources. 

We rejoice that by your grand design we are one with each other as we are one with you through Christ Jesus our Savior.  You are worthy of all the thanks and praise that we can offer.  Amen.