A Missionary Prayer

The following is a prayer that I wrote for a Lord's Day Service a while back. I would like to get back into the habit of writing out my prayers, so one or two of them might show up on this blog once in a while. I wrote this one for our annual missions conference, and I dedicate it now to my dear friends Doug and Anna Matangelo.

Great Father of glory: We gather together today to extol you as King, and to proclaim you as Lord. We know that you have called us all to be missionaries, to be ambassadors of your son Jesus Christ. We declare together, “Here am I, Lord. Send me.” As we recognize our calling as messengers, we also recognize our need to be transformed by the message. How can we be representatives of one whom we don’t know? So our prayer is that we will not be conformed to this world, but that you would transform us by the renewing of our mind. And as a result of this transformation in us, may we work to see the gospel preached, Christ proclaimed, the Bible obeyed, and the kingdom extended. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.