Songs From The Boat

Friends, thank you so much for joining me in this prayer journal journey.  You’ve noticed I haven’t updated the blog for quite a while.  I am now transitioning to a new blog that will continue my desire to pray for and bless my readers, this time with more of a story driven format.  It’s called Songs From The Boat.

My precious angel, my wife Barbara stepped into her new Heavenly body this past February.  We had been married 25 years.  In dealing with the events that preceded her death, and the subsequent grieving process, I felt like I needed a fresh approach to sharing my hope.

Thank you so much for your interest in sharing these prayers with me.  I pray that my new effort will also be a blessing to many.

Cast Off Chains and Dance

Father, we are broken and bound by corruptible flesh and daunting circumstances.  This morning as I offer the full of me to You I find that You alone are life’s true sustainable force.

You alone hold all things together.  You alone are constantly near to the brokenhearted.  And as my wife and I go through another season of hospitalization, You alone are enough for the heart that struggles and suffers.

Even as anger threatens to peel away my peace, even as frustration stirs my quietness, You alone are bringing me back to Your gentle, holy, comforting place.

You alone hold me together.  Hold me together now.

As I walk these halls and feel like so isolated by this new struggle, open my eyes to the countless ones around me who struggle and need hope.  Reawaken the joy in me that too easily sleeps through days like these.  Make me an instrument of Your glory (I laugh because that’s not a phrase I easily adopt!), so that I might clearly sound Your goodness and comfort and hope into other hurting souls.

Thank You that You have brought me from death to life in You.  Bring all good things to full recovery that this life may be lived with the knowledge that even the darkest moments are full of Your light.

Away with this dirge, and in with the happy songs.  Let them pour from me.  Let me not be content to sing the blues but instead, make my song sound like the very grace and mercy You’ve poured into me.

And all of this is to Your glory, my King.  Praise and honor to You forever!  You have made me proof that struggle does not have to plaster us to a filthy floor of sorrows.  You have lifted my mind and I am free to cast off chains and dance.

Things I’m Hungry For This Morning

Fall fresh!  Waves of mercy, flood our streets!

Father, Maker, Creator of all things, send all-consuming torrents of hope and peace and love.  Sweep over me, over my community, with power only Your Holy Spirit can bring.

Let light shine into the darkest places.  Let hope fill the most desperate heart.  Let knowledge enlighten the most unengaged.  Let action meet belief and let strength empower compassion.

Let it be this way in me.  Inspire me so that I might live this day with the right blend of words and silence.  Make quick my impulse to rightness and justice, and slow my more easily provoked anger impulses.

Let healing prevail.  Continue the good things in my wife that you started long ago.  Bring the wellness You’ve placed in her to full manifestation in her body.  Speak over the grieving and struggling hearts that linger here in this prayer now.  Give us the inner understanding of the power and purpose you bring to the life of the expectant believer.  Yes, make me an expectant man!  Make me pregnant with hope and virtue and god-directed strength.  Let healing flow from Your lips, through mine, into the streets of this city.

Raise up believers who believe, the redeemed who will redeem, the grace-filled who become grace-full.  Let Your grace be like rocket fuel in us, motivating and powering us to do the good things You planned long ago.

Fall fresh, I cry!  I hunger for it!  I seek it!  I wait!

Alive, Awake, Ready

Bring it on, Father!  Let the day explode in an endless flow of grace and goodness.  Away with dissension and political unrest and depressed, despondent minds.  I’m praying for a community revolution that spills over ’til it covers the earth like a flood.  Send the tsunami of Your presence upon us and awake the slumbering world; bring life, bring hope.

Do away with the useless distractions and focus me on Your ways, Your heart.

Do away with time wasters and sleepy slots – keep me moving that I can be a mighty flood of justice and an endless river of righteous living.

Do away with the words of the enemy; I will believe in You alone and in who I am in You.

Let life arise out of death, bring Your believers to a fuller knowledge and appreciation of Your great mercies and Your perfect ways.

All to You, my Savior, my Lord, my Friend, my God.

Genuine: Like My Father

Father, trash the stuff in me that is unlike You.  The attitudes, the mindsets, the reactions, the ways of seeing things; take what is foreign to Your blood and send it away.

I still find these annoying little things that creep up – or sometimes they pop up like fireworks – that create more havoc for me than good.  I’m done with them!  I don’t want to be satisfied with less when You are more.  I don’t want to sate myself with soft platitudes when in fact You are able to do far more than I can even imagine.  I don’t want to make excuses for my nature when in fact my relationship with You is largely predicated on my understanding of the supernatural.  You are more, You are able, You are a mighty God.  If you can hold the entire universe together…  in Your hand no less…  if Your words can move planets and shape color systems, than I can be sure You can shape me.  You can hold me together.

So I pray that Your righteousness will be my prime mover today.  I submit to Your Holy counsel and cleansing knowing that I don’t need filters for my mouth, I need heart-level change.  I don’t want to be a man of political gamesmanship or street-level war-making, I want to be genuine.  You are the real thing, You are in me, and I want that genuineness to saturate my being.

Take this fast beating heart, comfort this knotted, ill-at-ease stomach, and bring on the flood of righteousness that only Your Holy Spirit can ignite in me.

By faith I have given You Lordship over me.  By faith, I will walk in Your ways, seeking Your understanding, knowing Your will by the counsel of Your Holy Spirit.

Let Your mercy prevail in me.  Let it be so.  Let Your glory rise, my Lord, let it rise today!

Like A Fire

Like a fire, burn through me, Holy Spirit.

Like a fire, set me ablaze so the world will know.

Like a fire, make me a warm place for cold souls.

Like a fire, consume the parts of me that lead to death and destruction.

Like a fire, make me to glow in the darkness.

Heavenly Father, I anxiously await the full of Your anointing for this day, for this work You’ve given me.  As I worship You here, and I listen, as I enjoy Your presence, make me ready, steady and sure.

Holy Spirit, ignite the passions in me that need to burn, and consume all wrong thinking and misguided ideology in me.

Let this day be filed under, “Glory: Risen”!

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…

Wake Up, Fuzz Brain!

Wow, I sure need to pray for life this morning.  The fuzz in my brain is clogging my lint trap!  Father, I need a cool blast; there is much to do today and I don’t want to waste a single moment.

Clear my mind that I will think well, articulate well, respond well, plan well, dream well, study well and attend my duties well.

Clear my eyes that I won’t miss a thing you’re showing me.

Clear my schedule of any time waster that is conspiring its way onto today’s agenda.  Let’s make this day count!

Clear my heart of any passions that are distracting me from my greatest passion.

Clear my cache of any stale remnants of my past, of things forgiven, of things the enemy loves to use to distract me and bring me down.

Be at my center, Jesus.  Shake me, wake me and set me to the tasks that lie ahead.  Empower me in such a way that I may indeed do all things I do wholeheartedly, knowing they are for You.

Let it rise…  let Your glory surround this day, let Your glory inhabit this day.  This day is Yours, You made it, and I will celebrate its promise and hope.  Let it be so.

Fresh Rising Hope

I can’t run, I can’t hide from Your presence.  Your fresh falling mercies await me at the start of the day.  Even when I walk through the dark places, I will not fear, I will  not cry.  You are mine, I am Yours – this life if full of promise and hope.

I trust You, my hope is in You alone.

Worthy is the One who stands above the ages, whose victory is already won.

Name above all, priceless pearl, greatest treasure.

Jesus, how I love You, how I adore You.

Make me today the kind of man that loves beyond any qualification or justification.  Give me a generous helping of that unprecedented, supernatural love that sees sin like You do through the filter of Jesus.  Make my concern not the measure of quality in the person, but the measure of how much You love them in the first place.  Give me strength to do this, it’s not in me without You.

Let Your glory rise, let it rise in me today.

Not Tempered, Not Tamed, But Transformed

Glory to You Name, my Lord.  Name above all names, hope outshining all darkness, friend surpassing all friends.

Thank You for welcoming me to Your table this morning.  Make my heart a place of peace where others can find refuge as well.

Where violence sparks violence, lead my heart to respond as Your heart does.

Where dark words greet truth, give me wisdom and discernment in my response.

Where anger wells up in me and threatens to rage, bring me back to this place of peace and contentment.

Even if I lose my life, I gain everything.  Thank You for this hope that rises above all.

So prepare me for a day anchored in You, and make me a blessing to everyone I encounter.  Do not mask the ugly Greg that lurks in dark recesses of my heart; instead, irradiate him and transform me more today into Your image.  I don’t need filters for my words and thoughts, I need You in my deepest parts.  Be my cloak and marrow today!

My responses to the newscasts and newsfeeds are not always as they should be.  Again I pray, do not temper me or tame me, but transform me more into Your image.  I seek You alone.

All things to Your glory, all of me for You…  what a prayer to pray!  That is my soul’s reach, that is my heart’s climb, that is what stimulates my intellect today.  Thank You for these clearer thoughts and this sharper focus.  Thank You for saving me.

Let Your glory rise afresh in me today, let it rise in this community anew.  Let it be so in Your Name, Jesus.