Finding God’s Spot For Me In a World of Angry Words

Good morning, Father.

This seems like such an angry world at times.  People are mad about things someone said, the way they said it, perceived slights and downright dumb mistakes and…

Where is our peace?

How do I walk closer, tighter, nearer to You today so that I may walk through these controversies just as you would have me to do.

It is so enticing at times to throw my opinion into the mix.  Especially when it comes to stuff regarding You and Your people and how we do this walk with You.  I get Your reminder regularly that You don’t need me to defend You.  Help me to have the sense to remember that even in my weakest moments.

So, I pray that I would not walk INTO controversy, or AWAY FROM controversy, but simply be square where You put me.  Mouth only engaged in a manner that would be helpful.

When I perceive others are slighting me, remind me to pray for them in their hurt and emptiness.

When I want to engage with the controversial – political, faith, or otherwise – may my response bless You and those who hear.  Keep me silent to a the degree that my words mean something.  I have spent plenty of days being a blathering idiot, now make me a listener and a wise contributor.

And I start by listening to You.  Here I am, Lord, here I am…

I Want This Day To Be Different

Good morning Father.  I want this day to be different.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the way you created or blessed other days.  But I want this one to be different.

Not that I have earned a greater reward or deserve better.  I simply want this one to be different.

I want to know you better, to find that I’m following better, to speak fewer hurtful words and to cross fewer harmful lines.

I want to break fewer hearts and to mend more hurts.

I want to speak better of You by the things I do…  both in public and in private.

I want to listen more, to discern more, to ask more important questions.  I want to see hearing become doing.

I want to solve the root heart issue at play when my words are bitter or destructive.

I want to bless more people.

I want to make someone’s day a bit better, not a lot worse.

I want to feed someone who is hungry and to encourage someone who is down and lift someone who has fallen.

I want to grumble less when I’m hungry, down, or flat on my face.  Teach me to pray more in those times.  They’re all good places for seeking You.

I want this to be a better day not because the weather is better or the entertainment rocks or my body and mind feel stronger today. I want this day to be more about You.  That makes it better for me.

Teach me something new about Your ways today so that grace may become super-charged in me, so that I can pour it out to others in abundance.

In Your tenderhearted kindness and mercy, make me more tenderheartedly kind and merciful today.  That would be so much better than the option.

I want only You.  I bring all of me.  Let this day be different, my Lord.

You are the Name of above all names, Savior and Lord and creator and artist and friend.  You are Lord of Heaven’s armies, and You are Lord over this earth.

You are great and worthy of praise!

My Own Personal Brand of Foolishness

Hello, my Father.  As I prepared to enter into this prayer time, my mind took a side road and pondered the relevance of this being “April Fools Day”.

Two stark things came to my mind.

First and foremost, You are no fool! You see all, know all, and You’ve been there, known that.  This is a remarkable truth that I carry with me knowing that all my thoughts are a prayer to You, everything my mind discerns is discerned in conversation with You, and there are no mysteries about me where You’re concerned.  I suspect that it’s especially noteworthy to remember this, because I’m also reminded that You love me anyway.  Your grace and mercy and tenderhearted kindness blows my mind – or, at least, it blows away the fear.

Next, I remember that You abide fools and the wise alike.  I’m so thankful that my own personal brand of foolishness is no deterrent  to Your mission of mercy and salvation.  Though I still find ways to slip into foolish thinking, Your Spirit is faithful to counsel and instruct and guide.  Thank You that You saw fit to rescue me in my foolishness, and You went so far as to prepare a place for me at Your table.  Simply wonderful.

These thoughts turn my mind to the ways I treat others.  Give me peace and direction so that I may treat all encounters and all relationships with godly presence.  Let love be my motive, my first, my middle, and my last response.  Let my words be few and truthful and graceful.  Put this patience You’re developing in me to good use.  Inspire me, remind me of Your with-ness, and keep me calm and rational.

May I walk in Your ways, Oh my God!  Keep me near to You, precious Jesus, Lord and Savior.

Your Name rises far above others, You are great beyond compare.

So as I enter into this day’s worth of adventures and study, be my shepherd.  Remind me regularly that I am Yours, and You are mine.  Make me a blessing, I pray.  Let Your glory rise!

Building Character When It Counts

Father, my heart belongs to You!  My mind, my strength, my intellect…  it’s all Yours.

Thank You for Your promises, thank You for this hope I have in You.  Thank You that reasoning and discernment are all reconciled in You.  I love being in contact with Your beyond-genious mind and Your gentle, loving spirit.

Settle me where I am needlessly stirred.

Stir me where I’ve become complacent.

Help me to be just and good in all the decisions I make.  I know that I can’t accommodate everyone’s whims, but help me to walk right with You so that I may do and say what is right.  Help me to make good judgement calls.  Let Your wisdom permeate me.  Let Your fire motivate me.  Let Your ways be my ways.

Give me a nudge when needed; calm my restlessness when I’m hyper!

I celebrate the beauty of Your holiness and I wait by Your side for this daily touch I need.  I find my hope in You, and long for Your glory to rise all around me.

Help me now to be patient with those who agitate me, and spur me to go quickly to those who fall behind wanting to loved.

Thank You for the beautiful ways You are repairing, healing and making right things that have gone astray.

You are the Name above all Names, Light of Heaven, Hope of Earth.  Let Your will be done…  have Your way, my Lord…

Getting Warmer

Even on these frigid mornings, Your glory is all around me, Lord!  My heart sings to You today…  and what a thrill to know you might just be singing over me as well.

I pray for our school children today – especially the ones who have to walk through these arctic temperatures any distance at all.  Keep them warm, wrap them in such a glow of Your presence that even the child of the least concerned parent might stay warm and well.  For the ones with inadequate coats or wrapping, wrap them in You, Father.  Then wake the rest of us up to their plight so we can make sure they have what they need to stay warm.

Seal the leaks in drafty homes.  Keep our elderly safe and warm through these chilling events we’re experiencing.

Use these days to warm hearts as well.  How may I serve You better?  How can this community be changed by Your wonderful glory being made manifest through your workers doing right things.

How dare we linger in the idea that we can be Yours for even a moment and not be called to be blessings into the lives of others?  Forgive me for any vestige of such thinking left in me.  As long as there is breath and time, spur Your people to rise up and DO good things – the very good things You had in mind for us long ago.  May we be a mighty flood of justice and an endless river of righteous living.  May Your blood course through us, may Your ways be our ways, permeate our souls with Your passions.

Awaken us!  We must rise.  You already knew this – I am simply standing in agreement with it today.  Ready my heart for doing right things, be on my lips that I may teach Your people to rise and shine Your glory.  Remind me that I go nowhere that Your Spirit isn’t already there.  Give me the words, the tools, the heart.  Oh God, can we do this alone?  Thanks and praise to You that we don’t have to.  Empower us now!  Lead on, Great Lord of Heaven’s forces.

Even these prayers, even as they exist only in my heart and on this journal in these moment, make me sing with joyous expectation for what is to come.  You are such a wonderful God, a Mighty fortress and a Warm Coat!

I am so thankful for You, my friend, my Lord, my Father.  I am so grateful to be a part of Your masterwork.  Glory to You, all praise and honor belong to You, Lord God Jehovah!

Let Your glory rise.  Let it be so in me today.

The Snowfarer’s Prayer

Good morning Father.

The cold temperatures here today at first make me want to feel sorry for myself.  But quickly my mind goes to those with draftier houses than mine.  I think of those who can’t get out of the house safely and stare loneliness in the face.  I think of the ones stuck in ditches and the ones who have to walk to work through this.  I pray a blessing on these for safety, wellness and warmth.  Help us to be hardy snowfarers!  Send helpful strangers, enlighten willing neighbors, call us to the plight of those who are suffering in the cold.

Yes, warm our hearts to those who are freezing!

Make me mindful today that my prayer to be a blessing to others takes me INTO their lives even on the most inconvenient days.  Walk with me.  My words turn to groans as I realize the depth of my need to be more helpful to those who struggle.  Turn my heart afresh to them.  Give me the means to be helpful.  Make me strong.  I will walk with You, Father.  Grab me if I slip, would you?!

Our plight isn’t just about bad weather – give me new eyes and Your heart for those whose world is perpetually frozen over.  Give me the strength to clear the walkways for those who encounter tragic emotional, personal and spiritual snowfalls even in warm weather.  Make me more keen to the cries around me.  Help me to know how to help in a way that is profitable and fruitful.  Counsel me if I turn to the easy approaches that only enable these dear ones to remain in their plight.  Help me to be wise and discerning so that I can marshall the tools needed to enable my brothers and sisters in hard places to thrive.

Bring Your wellness to my heart, I pray.  As I contemplate Your glory and majesty and beauty, my adoration hints at my own depravity.  My gratefulness for Your blood gift of salvation grows each day.  Let it be my rocket fuel to live like a part of this masterwork, this masterpiece You are creating.  I am new in You, I am participant in the good things You planned long before I came along.  Let this worship inspire me to the better things You have in mind.  Make me an encourager, a dreamer/doer, a blessing to all those I serve.

All to You, my precious Savior – I surrender more!

Let Your glory rise – truly let it rise in this community today.  Let it rise in me as well.  All praise to You, wonderful Maker.

The Kind of Help I Need

Father, as I’ve read in the book of Daniel this morning, several fresh things come into my mind that I want to talk with You about.

First, while we may take measure of ancient societies as being barbaric, it seems that we too have turned barbaric in different sorts of ways. We allow the downfall of people by affording them countless excuses and get-out-of-jail-free cards. Help me to understand mercy and grace, while also walking in a way that helps the people I serve learn accountability and empowerment. You have not abandoned us to suffer, and it is not good for us to wallow in a mentality of suffering and hopelessness. How do we strike the balance of taking care of needs while at the same time teaching people to stand and be victorious? Help, please! Wisdom and discernment needed!

One insight You’ve just given me reminds me that we must be aware of the impact our decisions make on our entire family. When we choose to lay down and give up, it speaks death into the generations. Give me the smarts to know how to help lift people out of mentalities that curse generations. (Not that You can’t rescue a child of someone who falls under unhealthy thinking, but I have seen so many examples of parents working hard to teach bad habits and unhealthy thinking to their children.) I don’t want to be harsh… grace and mercy is my heartcry, Jesus You are my focus… I want to be wise so that I can be a part of the deliverance this community deserves. Help, please!

Here’s another thing I’m pondering. Something stood out to me in the story of Daniel and the lion’s den. I noticed that the king, who was clearly seeking You even in his state of self-adulation, was fasting and praying on behalf of Daniel’s plight. He refused anything self-serving and Your Word seems to indicate that Darius sought You and Your mercy. Am I reading that right? While I need to ponder this more, I do see such a wonderful picture of what happens when any of us turn to You with sincerity, laying it all out there is a self-sacrificial way. How can I better help those who are seeking You in this way? Is there something here I must do? Teach me this. If I’m right that You have started me on a path of understanding about how to better serve those who are searching for You, then know that I am ready to learn. Help, please!

And so I stand at the ready, and give You praise all the more. You are the great teacher, You are the core and source of all that is right, good, honorable, just and merciful.

May my weaknesses and follies be cast out, may my strength and focus in You be embellished! May integrity and honor and mercy and grace and love not just be my center, but may it be my reputation as well. My cloak and my marrow! May I be absorbed, saturated, possessed completely by You and Your ways.

May my mess-ups become fewer and smaller, and my right deeds become more and bigger! Thank You that I don’t have to earn Your favor, but thank You as well that I am given usefulness and purpose in You!

May Your grace not become a means of devaluing the good things You intend to do through us. I give You a willing heart, and I long to serve You.

So I say this plainly: Lord, my God, I love You with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. I humbly and sincerely purpose to love others in the same way. I purpose to see myself as useful to You, and to grow in love for what You have done in me. I want to live giving value to the valuable things. May I value what Your grace does in me and in others.

Social Life

(It has been a tumultuous couple days for me with my wife’s health issues creating complications and frustrations.  I am approaching my journal prayer a bit differently today.  I have a sense that I need to spend a few moments praying over you, the reader who comes here to pray with me, for healing in regards to your social life.  God is teaching me more and more to not only pray for spiritual, physical and emotional healing, but for social healing as well.  So here is my simple prayer for you.)

Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me!  Help me as I strive to serve others first that I will do so in the power of Your mighty, Holy Spirit.

I pray now for my friends who visit here to pray with me that a fresh healing will fall in regards to the social aspect of who they are. I don’t know the specific, but I do KNOW that as I pray this, You are revealing things to hearts that You want to make well.

I pray for relationship healing.  I pray that today would be the day of humility and forgiveness for each of us.  Help us to make right a relationship that we are absolutely sure was not damaged because of any fault of our own.  Give us the emotional strength and the inner humility to walk in grace and to be ready to say, “I was wrong.”  Give us strength, oh Lord!  Let the healing come.

I pray for healing in friendship circles.  Where unhealthy attitudes or talk is being shared and we willingly participate.  Break our hearts over the hurtful things we share, and let Your healing come.

I pray for healing in our attitudes about what society owes us.  Create in me, and in my friends here, a new heart that willingly serves others first.  May all shards of brokenness over feeling victimized be swept away.  Bring healing!  May we become industrious and diligent about serving our society.  Make us hard workers and willing servants.  Help us, Lord to overcome.

I pray for those who have been hurt by society that all the hurt will be swept up in Your healing wave, and that social ills will be met by Your blood.  Renew hearts, let grace and mercy rule the day.  Heal our society.  But I sense that the healing must begin in each of us, including me, first and foremost.

I pray that you would heal us in regards to what we do with our social hours.  Let them not be wasted or used to humiliate or ruin others.  Let there be a mighty flood of justice and an endless river of righteous living (Amos 5).

You, my God are DELIVERER.  Deliver us now, I pray.  Holy, health-making God, bring health to our social lives.  Bring healing to our social hurts.  Let there be wellness, and let Your glory rise!

Spare No Arrows

(There’s something about the powerful presence of God in prayer that lowers the demands of pride and finds healing in vulnerability.)

First of all, Father, thank You for inspiring me to listen to that old song, “Be Still My Soul” by The Imperials this morning. Reminded me of getting up early to work at the radio station during my college years! And best of all, it brought needed stillness to my soul. Seems strange that I would need to be stilled first thing in the morning, but the enemy seems to enjoy rushing me with overwhelming thoughts and emotions at times.

Speaking of the enemy, and I do so acknowledging Your triumph over all evil, thank You for the word from Jeremiah that reminded me of deliverance over captivity. Father, I pray now that you would make this place of prayer a stronghold. Let me take nothing for granted; I submit not only myself, but this room to You as well. Be mighty in this place! No room for darkness – only life! Fortify me for the battle. Fortify me so that I might spare no arrows, but fire against the destruction of the enemy. Keep foremost in my mind that this battle is not against flesh and blood, but against evil. The enemy is like so-called “mighty” Babylon. But Your people are on the way home, and we shall be at the ready to strike a blow against death and destruction in Your Name. We must spare no arrows!

OK, so here’s something really bugging me. At a point in my life where I believe I have really grown in love, mercy, kindness and acceptance, a monkey is thrown into the wrench!!! (Pardon my mixed metaphors, Lord!) There is one who I encountered again this past weekend who challenges me in some interesting ways (not that there aren’t many – but this one person proves to be a particular challenge). I’m sure people view her as one of the “crazy ladies” of the area, and even that grieves me. I think I succeeded in the grace and mercy department to an extent, but I feel sick that my love and kindness waned. Frankly, I failed to see You standing next to her, longing for her. That one is on me. I confess it and seek strength for this test to my resolve and my surrender to You. My fleshly side (and indeed, my olfactory senses) would prefer not to deal with her. But my heart is laid bare with Your compassion. Help me, help me, help me…

And with that I am again reminded that my prayer to see our entire community won to You, brought to life, given hope, stops with no one. If all means all, then it must be all. None can be taken for granted. All to You, and all for You. Help me, help me, help me. I’ve gotten good at grace for many, but I am lacking still for certain ones. Even at my ugliest, You never turned away from me. How can I turn away from any in Your Name? This is indeed a difficult process, more difficult then it seems it should be. I suspect that even though some people seem quite sanctified in this area, inside this must be everyone’s battle. There is someone to rub everyone the wrong way, I’m guessing. Help us all, deliver us from this trick the enemy has played on us. Let Your blood cover it all.

Knowing I will soon share this journaled prayer publicly makes me all the more want to be made right and whole in these things. If I am to share my weakness in prayer, and I must, Father give me strength and integrity to be transformed in these things. I must! I will, in You. Holy Spirit, send Your fire now. Cleanse me, make me more like the Son today. In whatever little or big way You work, I surrender.

I continue in prayer, lifting these things in Your Name, Jesus. Let Your glory rise. Let it rise in me.

A Prayer for the One Unsure of How to Pray Over Something Today

(If this moment finds you without words, deep in despair or feeling distant or even blocked from God, I offer this prayer as a blessing for you, prayed with you. It is simply derived from Colossians 3:12-15. I believe God’s Spirit wanted me to use these words to help you pray today.)

God of wonders, God over all, creator of the universe and lover of my soul…

Since You chose to love me, to set me apart for Your good purposes, I pray that those good purposes would come to fruition in me. I submit myself to Your better ways.

Assist me and empower me to clothes myself with tenderhearted mercy. Let kindness rule my actions and thoughts. Settle humility deep into my bones. Blanket me in gentleness. Guide me to be patient.

It’s so easy to see all the things everyone else is doing wrong. Especially the things they do to me, my family, and my friends. Counsel me so that I can learn to make allowances for the faults of others – seeing plainly that You love them just as You love me. Make forgiveness my nature no matter how deep the wound.

Provide for me clothing of love so that I may wrap myself in them. Change my disposition so that I can get along with others. Make me a force for peace and harmony.

Rule my heart with peace. Teach me the art of deep, holy breaths and quiet, holy pauses.

It’s hard at times to fathom that I can be part of the same community as people who are hurtful, until I realize that I have been hurtful to others as well. This has to stop somewhere. Peace must start with someone. May it start in me.

I want to be more thankful to You everyday. I take these moments to thank You for all the blessings I have, all the securities I have even as things seem to spin violently around me and in me at times. Thank You for Your patience with me. Thank You that even though I am insignificant to this universe, I am loved by You, creator of all things. I have purpose in You. May my thanks begin a new flow of hope in me today.

Jesus, I pray this in Your Name, let it be so.