Saturday, October 8, 2016

Prayer based on 1 Peter 2:4-8

1 Peter 2:4-8

LORD, let me come to YOU this day.  Help me seek YOUR presence and power.   Life is more difficult and confusing than I could ever imagine.   So I seek YOU now to be in YOUR presence and find YOUR peace. 

LORD Jesus, you are the cornerstone.  All the weight of God's plan is fully on YOU.  You are alive and real.  YOU are rebuilding the temple.  YOU are the temple. 

YOU have made me a living part of God's temple as well.  I am part of the spiritual house in which YOU are worshiped in Spirit and Truth.  Help me see that I am a priest.  

Receive my praise and thanksgiving as a spiritual offering this day through the perfect work of redemption YOU accomplished on the cross and resurrection.  

YOU, Lord, are good
YOU, Lord, are great
YOU, Lord, are full of grace

I stand in awe of who you are. 

I thank you for your promise that you will never leave me or forsake me.   I have immense gratitude for your commitment to having every painful thing I have ever felt be used for ultimate good. 

All that has happened has been planned and prophesied by Moses and the prophets long ago.  YOUR redemption of believers to become both temple and priests was in YOUR mind forever.  

Our destiny is to worship YOU in the promises of YOUR gospel forever and ever.   

Help me to act consistently with the reality that I am both a holy priest set apart to live and serve YOU.  
Grant me the grace to fulfill this calling in my life.  Let me make known your greatness, goodness, and grace  Reflect in me the reality of the great redemption YOU have brought to us.  

LORD, be praised forever in the light of YOUR glory.  Amen

Friday, October 7, 2016

Prayer based on 1 Peter 2:1-3

1 Peter 2:1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Lord, you have given to us the living and enduring word of YOUR love found in the wonder of YOUR death on the cross for our sins and resurrection from the dead proving our hope in YOU has a good reason.  In the light of that truth about YOUR love and involvement in our lives.  Help us now respond.  

In the light of YOUR love, help us to look inward.  Let me look inward.  Show to me my hidden faults.  
Help me to put away the anger, desire for revenge, self-righteousness, the lies I tell myself, the false impressions that I give others, the two-faced nature of so many aspects of my life, my desire for what others have, with the feeling that I deserve more than what I do have, and save me from the judgment of others and the demeaning of them instead of confession of my own shortcomings.  

Lord, save us from the darkness that is in us. 

Good loving Savior and King, give to us a hunger and thirst for the gospel that we may grow strong in the work of deliverance YOU have provided for us.  Let us cry out for YOUR word and see our need of YOUR word deep inside of us.  Put in us a passion for growing, into spiritual maturity.  

LORD, YOU are good, great, and full of grace.  YOU have allowed us to see, feel, experience this reality.  We could never have attained to an awareness of it without YOUR revelation by the HOLY SPIRIT.  Help us remember the times when the reality of the gospel was most real in our lives.   Let these memories fuel a fresh desire for YOU this day. 

LORD send to us a revival, renewal, and reformation to YOUR people now!  We need fresh wind and fire that only you can provide.  

Awaken the children born in YOUR covenant who have strayed from having faith, love, and hope in YOU.  Take what they were taught as children and allow them now to become a living reality to them as adults.  Remember them and the hopes of their parents.  Have mercy.  Revive them first.  

Come now and work in our generation. 

Lord, we need YOU now.  Act NOW.  Amen

Thursday, October 6, 2016

A prayer for days of storm

Isaiah 4:5 Then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy. 6 There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat, and for a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain. (ESV)

Lord, we are afraid of storms.  They remind us how powerless we are and unable to even predict what will happen next.  All of our wisdom flees us as we try to determine the future and plan for it, knowing that our plans are powerless against what will really happen.  

Storms remind us of our ignorance and the fragile nature of our efforts to control things.  We are left vulnerable.  Aware that if we have only ourselves to rely upon that there is only a little strength that we can muster in comparison to the strength of the storm.  

Lord, help us in the storms we face.  Some may be physical, some emotional. some intellectual, some in our relationships with those we love, and some in our relationship with YOU.  

You have promised a day when all the storms of this "East of Eden" life will end.  Your kingdom will come.  Your glory revealed.  YOUR presence will be so revealed to us that YOU will be our shade and shelter.  No storm can touch us when we are under YOUR full manifestation of grace and love. 

Help us now, in this present moment, remember YOUR promises and love.  Be our shelter from the storm this day.  Lift us up.  Guide us now.  Amen