Commissioning Prayer for Healthcare Students Starting Rotations
This is a commissioning prayer to pray with healthcare students before they begin their clinical rotations. Written as a responsive prayer, it works best when prayed within a community of students, faculty, alumni, and campus ministers. As you pray this prayer with them, you are helping them remember that God is with them and their InterVarsity chapter community is holding them in prayer.
LEADER: We are grateful to be able to gather today to bless and pray for these friends and servants of God as they begin the next season of their journey in healthcare training. Now together let us praise our God:
EVERYONE: Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
LEADER: Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.
STUDENTS BEGINNING CLINICALS: Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
COMMUNITY: Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
EVERYONE: For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.
LEADER: Lord, we entrust these friends to you, knowing that you have walked with them until now and you promise to go before them.
STUDENTS BEGINNING CLINICALS: Show us your ways, LORD, teach us your paths. Guide us in your truth and teach us, for you are God our Savior, and our hope is in you all day long.
COMMUNITY: Lord, we thank you for our time together with these friends who seek to serve you in and through healthcare. Guide their steps as they begin this new journey – meet them in their moments of worry, fear, and uncertainty, and also in their times of joyful anticipation, hope, and gratitude.
STUDENTS BEGINNING CLINICALS: Good Shepherd, you are our Provider, Sustainer, Deliverer, and Redeemer. You have invited us into this good work of caring for people, partnering with you to see them flourish and experience wholeness.
LEADER: Jesus, you are our Healer. Show these students how to follow your example, showing mercy and love to the hurting.
STUDENTS BEGINNING CLINICALS: May your unfailing love be with us, LORD, even as we put our hope in you. Lord, you know what we need and yet you also encourage us to ask for our daily bread. We need your guidance, your wisdom, your compassion, and your grace. For on our own, we will rely on ourselves, and begin to think that we are god.
COMMUNITY: The LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though we may stumble, we shall not fall, for the LORD upholds us with his hand.
STUDENTS BEGINNING CLINICALS: Remind us daily of our dependence on you, our Creator, and our Healer. Guide us by your Holy Spirit to see the image of God in each and every person we meet. Use us as instruments of your healing in this broken world.
LEADER: And now we gather around these friends and lay hands on them. We bless them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Community gathers to lay hands on the students beginning clinical rotations) We send them out as an extension of this community – called to your good work of healing and restoration.
COMMUNITY: Jesus, as when you sent out the 72, we ask for you to provide for these friends “people of peace,” to care for them, and meet them on this next leg of their journey. When they face challenges, remind them of your faithfulness and goodness. When they experience success and joy, call them to worship. We ask for your Spirit to fill them to overflowing with gratitude, praise, and thanksgiving.
STUDENTS BEGINNING CLINICALS: Lord, use these hands (hold out hands before you) to serve you and the people you bring across our path. Remind us that we are joining in your good work of healing.
COMMUNITY: We commit to praying for these friends regularly, remembering that they are sent by this community and belong to this community.
LEADER: The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace
Download Commissioning for Students Beginning Clinical Rotations (pdf)
