My prayer life was upended when I began praying for specific pastors and churches before praying for beloved family and friends. I pray for pastors something like this: “Father, enable them to spend the week mountain climbing and bring a description of the summit back to the cloud-covered lowlands. Empower them to see past the ravages of sin to be ravished by your beauty, then preach like lovers who have just lifted the veil for a glimpse of their beloved. Help them feast on Your Word and present a foretaste of that heavenly banquet where our hunger will be satisfied. Cause them to drink deeply of the river of your delights, so our thirsty souls can catch sprinkles of grace through his sermons.” 

Then I ask, “If these pastors have wearied of climbing or despaired before a foreboding cliff, have forgotten the beauty of Christ, or gone hungry and thirsty all week, help them grab hold of the gospel (our rope in the grueling climb, our beauty in this sin-scarred world, our food and drink)—then remind us of the glory that pierces through the clouds.”

As under-shepherds, pastors follow the mountain-climbing, feast-spreading, veil-rending footsteps of our Lord: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food, full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations” (Isaiah 25:6-7). 

Pray for your pastor today,