A prayer from Gordon MacDonald for Ted Haggard, his family, and New Life Church in Colorado Springs:

Lord and Father,
How sad you must be when you see the most powerful and the weakest of your children fall prey to the energy of sin and evil. There is nothing any one has ever done that we –each of us—is not capable of doing. So when we pray for our brother, Ted Haggard, we pray not out of pity or self-righteousness but with a humble spirit because we stand with him on level ground before the cross.
Father, give this man and his wife the gift of your grace. Protect them from the constant accusations of the evil one who will seek to deny them sleep, tempt them to talk too much to the public, arouse conflict between them as a couple and with their children. Send the right people into their lives who can provide the correct mixture of hope and healing love. Deliver them from people who will curry their favor by telling them things they should not hear. Restrain them from making poor judgments in their most fearful moments.
>Lord, be present to the leaders and people of the New Life Church. And to the NAE leadership which has to live with the side effects of this tragedy. And to people in the evangelical tradition who are wondering today who they can trust. What more can we pray for? You know all things. We so very little.
Amen.

My heart is so broken over the loss of Ted Haggard’s ministry. There is so much we can learn, but over all, I am broken. One problem I have in my own life is that I am so busy I have no time to process all of this. I have no time to be truly broken. My heart really needs to grieve.