Are you feeling like you just need one more cup of coffee, a perfect night’s sleep, or an extra day off? Teachers everywhere can fall into the trap of thinking they can power through stress by pushing themselves harder. What if the key to feeling recharged isn’t just about squeezing more into your already overflowing plate? Maybe God has a different strategy in mind. In today’s Prayercast, let’s pray for those who are hurting from life challenges and grieving the loss of loved ones to find comfort and strength from God. Trusting in his grace and allowing ourselves to rest can be the key to feeling truly invigorated. Forget just adding to your plate; what if God’s plan involves a different kind of productivity, one fueled by his power?

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Prayercast: Students Who Are Hurting From Life Challenges And Grieving The Loss Of Loved Ones

Welcome to the show. We have educators from different parts of the country gathered together to seek God and to pray for you. Their prayers follow the ACTS prayer model, which is an acronym for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. This prayer model helps to focus our hearts on who God is and what He has done before we turn our hearts to ask Him for His continued work. You may want to try this model yourself to open up your conversation with God to help you feel more comfortable talking with God freely and also resting in silence with Him. As you pray along with our sisters, may the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

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Welcome, everybody, to the prayer call. We are going to begin this episode with a prayer of adoration.

Prayer Of Adoration

Prayer of adoration. Lord, we love You. We adore You. We exalt You. We lift You up. All the glory we give to You for Your blessings. We lift You up. Hallelujah is the highest praise. When we think of all of Your goodness, lifting hands and lifting voices with our hearts, Lord, we lift You up. Hallelujah is the highest praise. We love You. We bless You. We lift You up. Hallelujah.

Praise Your name, God. Praise the Lord. We will exalt the Lord with all our heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the Lord. They are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are His deeds, and His righteousness endures forever. He has caused His wonders to be remembered.

The Lord is gracious and compassionate. He provides food for those who fear Him. He remembers His covenant forever. He has shown His people the power of His works, giving them the lands of our nations. The works of His hands are faithful and just, and all His precepts are trustworthy. They are established forever and ever enacted in faithfulness and uprightness. He provided redemption for His people. He ordained His covenant forever.

Holy and awesome is His name. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Hallelujah. Thank You for the wisdom of the teachers, God. All who follow His precepts have a good understanding. Thank You for the understanding of teachers, Father God, understanding when students come to us with situations they are involved in, understanding when parents come to us with situations they are involved in, and giving us the wisdom, Lord, to help them to discern. Sometimes, they ask what we think, or sometimes, they need an ear to listen. God, we thank You for that understanding and wisdom in those situations.

We as teachers, professors, administrators, counselors, and all school support staff come to the altar to give praise and honor to the name of God. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Come let us bow down in worship. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker, for He is our God. We are the people of His pastor, the flock under His care as the students are to their teachers for You, God, have the ability to get glory throughout the school building.

God of grace, we worship You and Your living presence in us. Dear Lord God, there is no one like You. You made the wind blow and the rain fall. You bring us comfort when we are feeling sad. You bring healing to those who are sick and free those who are experiencing mental anguish. You are a God of almighty acts. We love you, Lord, our strength. The Lord is our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer in whom we take refuge. You are the shield and the horn of our salvation.

Lord, You are the daily stronghold for Christian educators in a morally weak world. Our souls yearn for the presence of the Lord. Better is 1 day in Your presence than 1,000 elsewhere. For the Lord God is a sun and a shield, the Lord bestows favor and honor to school staff who seek His guidance. The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him.

Sing praises to the Lord, all ye His saints, and give thanks to His holy name. The Lord is our song and our happy place. He has become our salvation. For this, we will praise You, Lord, among the nations and sing praises to Your name. Lord, You are the one that enabled teachers to create something out of nothing. To Him who is able to keep You from stumbling and to present You blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy. To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. Praise be to God of the most high through all times and always. Amen.

Prayer Of Confession

Prayer of confession. Verse John 1:9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Father God, we come once again to Your throne room with this prayer of confession. Father God, we know that at times, we do not seek to do things in Your way and Your timing. We constantly seek to fulfill our flesh rather than seeking to please You. We don’t always choose to say the right thing, do the right thing, or go where You have called us to go. This is an era of disobedience.

John 1:9 - If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Click To Tweet

We know that we cannot say that Jesus is Lord of our life if we do not make Him Lord over all of it. We cannot claim to love You aloof in our hearts if we still are willy-nilly and disobedient. We cannot disrespect the Holy Spirit and do damage to His temple and our bodies when we don’t obey. We come to You confessing these things earnestly. We take twenty seconds to individually ask for Your forgiveness.

Father, we confess that at times, we are not good stewards of the time, materials, jobs, and even patience and joy that You have given us. We don’t always appreciate the work You have called us to do, and we don’t always look favorably at the outcomes. We sometimes joke about how we can’t wait until summer or the weekend, not thinking about how this may make our students feel. We know that we are, for sure, guilty of this.

Father God, we thank You for reconciling us to You. We thank You that even in all of this, Your grace is abundant. We do not need to feel condemned, but we thank You for Your righteous judgment and Your perfect conviction. We choose to cast old things to the side because all things are made new in You. We are new creatures.

Please help us not to live condemned by our mistakes, our past, or the times we haven’t chosen to represent You correctly. Please help us to go forward with Your perfect and total forgiveness knowing that it is complete and You have cast our sins in the depths of the sea. As Your word says in Judges 17:9, we know that Your word is true and free of any dishonesty. We thank You for forgiving us. In Jesus’ mighty name, amen.

Prayer Of Thanksgiving

Prayer of Thanksgiving. Thank You, Lord God, for answering prayers for our students. Thank You for the energy that You give us daily as well as wisdom, patience, gentleness, discernment, and the joy that comes from serving You in our schools. Father God, thank You for Your nearness to us in our classrooms. As we silently pray over our students and as we cry out to You for help right in the middle of our lessons, in meetings, or while we’re having conversations with parents or staff members, You are near, Lord God. Thank You for that.

God, You are overall and You are in all. Thank You, omniscient one. Thank You for the ways You have sustained us through this school year, especially when we are tempted not to come to school, daydream about retirement, or count the hours and days until a break. Lord, You brought us through. You showed us why we are in our specific school building. You revealed how You are working to give our students growth and maturity and providing for their needs, Lord.

God, we thank You. We need You, Lord. Thank You for humbling us when we have made assumptions about students, their parents, and their living situations. Lord, forgive us. Thank You for opening our eyes and showing us what we need to know about our students so that we can pray for them intentionally. Thank You for helping us to bear all the things that we see and all the things that are revealed to us about them, Lord God. Sometimes, it feels so heavy, Lord, but when we bring these things to You, Lord, You hear us. Thank You for that, Lord Jesus.

Lord, thank You for Your protection every day as we go to and from our schools. Sometimes even when we teach in combative situations, Lord, there You are. You are near us, Lord. You are protecting us and our students. Thank You, Lord Jesus. Abba Father, thank You for intervening and working for our good even when we are not obedient. Thank You for bearing fruit through us even as we are broken and sinful, Lord God.

Finally, Lord, thank You that we are more than conquerors through You. You loved us first, Lord. Thank You for that. Thank You that neither life nor death, angels, rulers, things present, things to come, powers, height, depth, nor anything else in all creation will separate us from Your love, God. Your love in Christ Jesus, Lord, it lasts forever. It’s eternal. Thank You for this gift. We love You, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Prayer Of Supplification

Prayer of supplication. Dear heavenly Father, we pray for the school-aged children who are parents. We thank You that these precious parents made the decision to cherish and honor life by having these babies come to term and be born. Father, we pray for these parents who may have made the very difficult decision to put their babies up for adoption or have family members or other people raise their children.

Father, we pray that You give them the grace and the comfort that they need to help them heal during the separation process. Help these Young parents not feel guilty or inadequate. Father, help them understand that You see them and that You desire to have a relationship with them through Your son, Jesus. Help them understand that You are the Father to the fatherless and You make homes for the lonely.

We also pray for those young parents who have taken on the responsibility of raising their children while still attending school. We pray for perseverance, patience, support systems, caring grandparents, understanding teachers, and pregnancy, single mother, and single father ministries who will come alongside these young parents to help them physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Father, we pray that You’ll raise up Your servants to create new and relevant ministries to help these very young parents. We pray that generational patterns of having children before getting married will be reversed and that this generation of young parents will break the trend. We pray that record numbers of these students slash parents will cry out to You and become followers of Your son, Jesus.

Father, we also pray for the children whose parents may be present in the home but are unable or unwilling to parent their children and leave that heavy responsibility on older siblings who feel crushed under this weight. Father, we pray that You supernaturally lighten that load. We pray that You soothe the crushed souls and hearts of these children who have become default caregivers. We also pray for the younger siblings who are not being properly cared for because their caregivers are children who have their own needs and concerns.

Father, we thank You that we can come to You and pray for the safety of students and staff of schools throughout this land. As followers of Your son, we proclaim that when we pass through the waters, You will be with us, Lord. When we pass through the rivers, they will not overflow us. When we walk through the fire, we will not be burned nor will the flames scorch us.

We thank You that You put a hedge of protection around us against intruders in our buildings, against those who are under the influence of evil, against deadly drugs and chemicals like fentanyl, and against weather events and earthquakes. We pray for Your protection from accidents, disease, injury, or any physical, mental, or emotional abuse. Father, we specifically pray for Your protection from the schemes of the enemy. As evil powers and principalities are at work in our schools and communities, we stand in faith in Your word, which says in Isaiah 59:19, “When the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against Him.”

Lord, we give You praise because we have confidence that we have prayed according to Your will and that You have heard all of these petitions and supplications. We can say that we know that we have what we have asked of You. In closing, I pray Ephesians 1:18-19, “I ask that your heart may be enlightened so that you may know the hope of His calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe.” Amen.