Today, we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit that pushes us, challenges us, and bids us to see the ways God moves around the world unexpectedly. This day, we embrace that which is uncontrollable, that which is beyond us, and the ways we can be swept up in a spirit of righteousness, peace, and compassion. All these things are alive around us today, and we pray that they would be alive in us too.
Unto this end, will you pray with me?
Come Holy Spirit, come and fill us with your love. Open our eyes to see the presence of God all around us in the consistent rhythms and the quiet of sacred spaces, in our hectic schedules and the cacophony of noises that penetrate our peace, in the joys and celebrations of our lives, and in the tragedies and struggles that break our hearts.
Come Holy Spirit and comfort those who grieve. Grant them peace that surpasses understanding. Stir within us a trust in life beyond death as we ponder the mysteries of Christ’s resurrection and the hope we have in new and everlasting life.
Come Holy Spirit and bring wholeness and healing to the sick. Strengthen those who feel weak. Heal the wounded and the broken. Give rest to the weary. Find those in isolation.
Come Holy Spirit and inspire our warring world to seek peace, to extend love, and to put away weapons.
Come Holy Spirit and ignite a fire in our bones, a passion for justice that cannot be quenched until all your children are loved, until no one is marginalized or oppressed, until everyone has the opportunity to thrive, and until the world is transformed and renewed.
Come Holy Spirit and revive your church. Liberate us from complacency and apathy. Inspire us with Christ’s vision for a world reborn. Help us to recognize our gifts for ministry and to use them in service to others. Transform our hearts and our minds. Fill us with a love that overflows. Remind us that there is no better calling than to love You with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Help us to love ourselves and our neighbors.
Gracious God, Holy Spirit, give us a glimpse of your Kingdom emerging around us and drawing us into the new things you are doing in the world.
Come Holy Spirit! It is for your Kingdom that we now pray, using the words Jesus taught us, saying:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
NOTE: This prayer borrows language from one given at First Baptist Church of Christ (Macon, Georgia) by Rev. Kelsey Stillwell on Pentecost Sunday of 2022.