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The whole month of October is Pastor Appreciation Month and specifically, October 9th is Pastor Appreciation Day. Can we join together this month and cover our very own Pastor Frank in prayer?

1. Pray for Your Pastor’s Daily Heart-Connect with Jesus

The single most decisive factor in your pastor’s life and ministry is his personal Jesus-time. Just as the epicenter of Jesus’ ministry was His daily time with His Father.

A pastor faces two dangers here. That his time in the Word will become more head than heart, more informational than transformational. Second, Bible study can drift from being about his soul to being about his sermon. And, “devotions” can become more about being with a book than being with a person.

2. Pray for Your Pastor’s Priorities

So many demands and expectations. It's so easy for a pastor to be driven by the urgent while neglecting the important. It’s a constant battle to sort out the needs of the people, the needs of your family, the needs of your soul. Neglecting of any of these can ultimately spell disaster.

3. Pray for Your Pastor's Protection from Enemy Attack

Jesus told Peter that Satan desired to sift him as wheat. He could say that to any shepherd of God’s people. It was in a passage Peter wrote to “elders” that he warned, “The devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8 ). Of course. Bring down the shepherd and it’s open season on the sheep.

4. Pray for a Pastor's Marriage and Kids

If the enemy can’t get to the pastor, he’ll work on dividing, detouring, and destroying his family. There’s nothing like conflicted or collapsing family relationships to rob a pastor of his strength, his credibility, even his ministry.

5. Pray for “Fresh Manna” to feed God’s People

Not recycled sermons or passionless preaching. Pray that each time your pastor teaches or preaches, he will have something that has come from God’s heart, through your pastor’s heart—and straight to the hearts of the people. Something he can be excited about! God’s Word is “alive and active” (Hebrews 4:12). The preaching of it should be, too.

6. Pray for That Life-Changing Combination of Courage and Compassion

Courage to clearly proclaim what God says as the final word on any subject. With so many believers being increasingly shaped by their culture more than their Christianity, it takes pastoral courage to stand firmly on God’s Word...at a time when it’s getting more and more lonely to do so.

7. Pray for Encouragement

Pray for your pastor to get the encouragement he needs—and too often lacks. Those who deal with pastors all the time consistently report a crisis of discouragement. Constant criticism. Failure feelings. Disappointed dreams. Lack of visible results. Lack of appreciation and gratitude.

- Hutchcraft, Ron. (2022, October 04) "7 Powerful Prayers for Pastor Appreciation Month" https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/prayer/powerful-prayers-for-pastor-appreciation-month.html