How to live “quiet and peaceable lives”! Pray for your leaders.
It was a great privilege to be invited to be the guest speaker at the “Queensland Parliamentary Christian Breakfast” on the morning of Tuesday, April 2nd. This was kindly arranged for me by Fiona Simpson, the member for Maroochydore and I attended the breakfast with our First Assistant Bishop Mark Vainikka.
At the breakfast, I shared briefly about the journey that I personally travelled into the gospel life of the Church, through the witness of the people of St Peters Lutheran College in the late 1970s. I then proceeded to explain the wonderful history of the 22 women and men who established the Zion’s Hill Mission Station at Nundah in the 1830s. I showed the connection between this early Christian mission work to the contemporary Lutheran witness in Queensland, as well as the connection to the work of all Christians in our state, including those in parliament, as we all bear witness to the gospel in our daily vocations.
We are blessed to have so many faithful Christian men and women within the Parliament of Queensland. At the close of the breakfast, I was invited to pray for them and for all the people of our Queensland Parliament and so I did just that. However, I take this request for prayer, as a request not only to me, that I would pray for Parliament at that very moment at the end of the breakfast. I take this as a request also to you and to all Christian people in our State, asking us to pray for our leaders.
In the “General Prayer” in our liturgies in the Australian Lutheran Hymnal and Supplement, there is always a line about our government leaders. For example, in the Service with Holy Communion, (commonly called “page 6”) we pray, “Help those in government and positions of responsibility to maintain honesty and truth, justice and peace.”
This is an ancient practice for the Church. This is our ‘call’ as God’s people to prayer for our leaders. There is a purpose in this praying, wonderfully described in the second chapter of St Paul’s first letter to Timothy, where he writes, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
It is an easy thing to forget to pray for our leaders. However, we have this command in 1st Timothy with an urgent call to remember to pray for our leaders, noting that the Scriptures explain the purpose, “That we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”
The Parliamentary leaders would certainly appreciate regular prayers from you personally and from the communities of the Churches across Queensland.
In Christ
Paul
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