SBTS, May 16, 2008
This is graduation week at Southern, and I thought I’d post this prayer I was asked to offer on the occasion of Jedidiah’s receiving the M.Div. eleven years ago. In the audience was my father Raymond (B.D., SBTS, 1936), who was 98 at the time.
Dear Lord,
We thank you for drawing these graduates to yourself, for saving them, and for shepherding them through the years, even unto this seminary graduation.
We are so grateful to you for the blessing and inspiration they have been to us already.
We ask that you spend their lives to gain great purchase on this world, that many souls will be saved, and that awakening and revival will come upon the people they address in Jesus’ name.
Lord, please grant that the ministries of these graduates will be so singular and fruitful that future historians might give their collective impact for the Kingdom special notice. Please help them to start well, to run well, and to finish well.
Please, Father, give them their daily bread and forgive them their debts, as they forgive their debtors. Please lead them not into temptation, but deliver them from evil. May they be instant in season and out of season, as they reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all long suffering. May they hunger and thirst for righteousness, may they be meek and pure in heart, and may they be makers of your peace. Please help them to be perfect in every good work to do your will, working in them that which is well pleasing in your sight, through Jesus Christ.
God, I pray that you might give them great and lasting friends in the ministry. I ask that, in this terribly confused and willful world, the men gathered here today would be manly, and the women womanly. That they would be known for their devotion to truth and to love. That they would remain radiant and salty, never losing the awe and joy they had when you saved them and called them to serve you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
