Recently my Pastor and his family had a very serious prayer request, from the pulpit the pastoral staff called the entire church to prayer. Updates from the pulpit and on social media were given regularly. “Team” shirts with a scripture the family was holding onto were worn by the staff at every service. It was during one of the service updates that it dawned on me, the enemy could attempt to use this situation as a means to cause offense and division. How? Can’t you just hear the enemy whisper in someone’s ear, “I see, when it’s their (the Pastor) prayer request, the entire church is called to prayer and t-shirts are made, but when it’s your prayer request nothing like this is done.”

We benefit when our Pastors are at the forefront receiving breakthrough and experiencing victory on all sides. Not because they are more important than us and not because their prayer request matter more than ours but because I believe there is a principle at work – as the head goes, so goes the body. In the old testament we read how the priest and leaders of Israel were anointed, the oil was poured onto their head and it flowed down. 

Show me a defeated, spiritually anemic pastor and I will show you his defeated, anemic congregation.

More than ever before, our Pastors need our prayers. They need folks who genuinely love them and want them to succeed at the calling they have been given.

Here are the top 3 things you should be praying over your Pastor:

1. Protection
Suggestion Scripture: Psalm 91
Not only pray for physical protection but for protection of soul and spirit as well. Pray that any traps of the enemy would be revealed, easily seen – even from far off, in order to be avoided and brought to nothing.

2. Wisdom
Suggested Scriptures: 1Corinthians 2:16
Big decisions are made, some we will never even know about. Pray your Pastor will have the mind of Christ, that the Pastor is surrounded by like-minded leaders with vision and passion but who most of all, love your Pastor and the church.

3. Revelation
Suggested Scripture: John 16:13
You may not believe it but it is easy to get caught up in the work of ministry, it can be easy to leave God out of the plans, easy to receive your calling and think it is now all up to you to make it happen. You can fall into the trap of substituting prayer and seeking God with hard work and grit – everything flowing out of your own mind and plans rather than out of your spirit and the strategic insights given to you by God. You can begin to run the church as an institution or business. It won’t be far too long before burn-out comes knocking on the door and the joy of living out your life’s call begins to fade.
The days that we are currently living in require we hear God’s voice clearly and He is saying to us now, at this time. Let’s pray that the heart of our Pastor remains sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. That their faith grows and expands, that the Word, more than anything else, is valued and that pleasing man rather than God, has no place.