Pray the word with David Platt is a resource from Radical.net.

Luke, chapter 20, verses 45 through 47, and in the hearing of all the people, he said to his

disciples, beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and love greetings in

the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts who devour

widows houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.

Man, there's so much here and I'm just going to go ahead and say from the start there's a

personal reason why I'm reading these verses because they're a warning to me and every leader

in the church of any kind in particular every leader among God's people. Jesus is clearly

in a very sobering way for any church leader pronouncing condemnation upon those who lead

without humility or authenticity or integrity or justice and I just want to encourage us right now

to pray for spiritual leaders to be guarded against these things. I would ask you to pray these

things for me but I also want to encourage you to pray these things for spiritual leaders in your

life. Just think of anybody who's in a position of spiritual leadership in your life and I have

people like that in my life so to pray specifically for spiritual leaders right now knowing this is

so important. We all need leaders in the church in our lives who are showing us what it means to

follow Jesus. We need that in order for us to be healthy followers of Jesus and so this is good

for them and it's good for you and me to have spiritual leaders who reflect the character of Christ

and not that of the scribes who are described by Jesus here. Can we just join our hearts right now and

pray for spiritual leaders God for all the spiritual leaders in our lives that we are thinking of right

now that have influence in our lives God we pray for their humility before you and others we pray

that you would guard them from the intoxication of the best seats in the places of honor and the

greetings that would cause them to seek after those things instead of seeking after you and faithfulness

...