Your pastor needs your prayers

Hebrews 13:18 Keep praying for us…
Most frequently church members are apt to judge, to laugh at, and to hold in derision, a church leader who has fallen from grace. Perhaps it has never occurred to them that the success of spiritual leaders is heavily dependent on the prayer support of the church he or she presides over. Let me submit to you that your pastor desperately needs you to frequently pray for him or her if the will and the mandate of God to the church is to be accomplished. Prosperity, advancement and stability of churches depend on the quality of spiritual leaders. Churches rise and fall because of leaders. Prayerless churches beget powerless church leaders. Conversely, prayerful churches produce powerful leaders who have real contact with heaven.
When a church leader has got real contact with heaven it is the church that benefits. The Bible says that spiritual leaders are given to the church in order to bless, perfect and mature the saints of God. Ephesians 4:11-13 says, “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness.” Now this verse goes to show you that God has prescribed order for everything. The success of the saints is bound up with the church leaders. On the other hand, the continuity and stability of spiritual leaders is bound up with the saints. This makes for interdependence in the Body of Christ. We desperately need each other.
This interrelatedness or interdependence keeps both shepherds and the sheep humble. No statement in the whole New Testament more clearly illustrates this interdependence than this one: ‘strike the shepherd, scatter the sheep.’ This means that once your spiritual leader is struck in any way there is some definite scattering among the sheep. Striking and scattering refer to harm. It may be harm due to sin or attacks of Satan. This now makes it mandatory for the saints or the church to pray for its leaders.
If you do not pray for your pastor, you will suffer harm in one way or the other. You can be fed wrong doctrine. You can be led astray. Evil spirits that follow or attack him or her can be transferred to you. The failure of your pastor is somehow transferable. In other words there is such a spiritual connectedness between church leader and the church that he or she oversees. Striking of shepherd and scattering of sheep are interrelated. God said it is so. So we must take it seriously.
Two fine examples of the interdependence of the church and its leaders are described in the New Testament. In Acts chapter 12, there are two opposite occurrences which show that church leaders desperately need the prayer support of the saints. Firstly, King Herod seized Apostle James. The church did not pray for that spiritual leader. So Herod went ahead and killed Apostle James. A spiritual leader was struck and the church suffered the blow. However, with the benefit of hindsight, when Herod also seized Peter that he might kill him, the church prayed without ceasing. The result was that Peter was miraculously released. The church was greatly encouraged by the victory and since then the gospel began to spread like fire.
Do you realize how much we lose as a body of Christ, a church assembly, as an individual saint, all because we are complacent in the issue of prayer? Prayer is the vehicle that moves God’s hand and the magnet that draws God’s strength and anointing. And it is the anointing so released in response to prayer that accomplishes exploits for God’s glory and for the good of saints.
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