WATCHWORD:
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Psalm 51:10-12
Meditation:
Praying into 2025
In a recent sermon, Allen Jackson spoke of four key elements in the prayerful worshiping of God: Receiving Christ, Renewing our faith, Releasing our fears, and Rebuilding the broken places in our lives. In the following pryers, I followed those four points in lead us into this new year the Lord has given us.
Let us pray: My Heavenly Father, too often we go through the motions, we recite the words, in often superficial ways saying that Christ is our Lord and savior. Help us, to change that as we go into this new year seeing Christ in a very real way. In each of our moments, help us to breathe in our Lord, strengthening of our faith, help us to reach out and share with courage and a certain reverent boldness that opens the minds and the hearts of others.
Lord God, we have gone too long, relying on tired, old elements of our worship of you, help us to renew and refresh, give us new courage and new energy to truly represent you in the way we live our lives. Help us Lord, to start each day with a joy that is tangible, that people can see and even experience as we interact with others. Lord, grant us the strength to speak of our faith and to represent it, not just in words but in actions, what it means to be loved and what it means to love others. Remove any barriers, Lord, that may prevent us from being truly genuine and authentic in our embrace of others.
Precious Jesus, Lord and savior, I need your strong right hand. I need your encouragement because I think it will take all that to release these fears that I have, the small voice of doubt and of anger, that we hear within, which generates anxiety and uncertainty, that seems to suggest that I do not trust you, Lord. I rest my faith on you, and you alone, Lord, and help me to release all of those concerns and uncertainties, all of those dark places in my life, those times when I have failed to follow you. Help me to remove all those from my life, and in those places, grant me a powerful sense of joy and peace and calmness, a happiness that is so contagious that it spreads from friend to friend, from friend to stranger, and from stranger to stranger.
Finally, Heavenly Father, I recognize that there are broken places in my life that need to be restored, that need to be rebuilt with strength and love. Help me to boldly and with loving words put right what is wrong, and bring those pieces together, and restore them with a bond that cannot be broken because it is a bond formed by the love of God, so resilient that nothing in all of creation can break it apart. I pray that in the restoring it is the cement of your enduring love, God. May this new year that we have before us, be a true new beginning.
Lord, all of these prayers, we ask in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.
