7 Prayers That Work

  Have you ever prayed and asked God to give us the desires of our heart? It's a Scriptural. David prayed these words. But let's look at the whole prayer for some context . How should you pray for the desires of your heart? We find this important phrase in Psalm 20 . David outlines his troubles to God, and he speaks truth over his fears. Three times, David gives a humble and worshipful response to God's character of goodness. This prayer is anything but a laundry list for desires, but it is an outpouring of desire for God and from God. Here's how it goes: Dear Lord, you answer me when I'm in distress. You protect me. You send help from your sanctuary and give me support from Zion (that's angel protection and help!). You remember my worship and my gift offerings. You give me the desires of my heart . You make all my plans succeed . I shout for joy  and lift up the banner displaying God's goodness. You grant my requests. You save me because I am yours, and ...

  Did you know that many of the key characters in the Christmas story left  prayers for us to read ? They were overwhelmed, amazed, frightened, and thankful. They were like us, really. They witnessed Emmanuel "God with us," just like we do. They had to stop in their stress and anxiety and notice God's wonder. And let that experience change them. Below are 7 prayers from that first Christmas.  Plus one from me.  They all address the issues we feel on a regular basis. The first 7 prayers are by the Christmas story characters themselves. Read their stories. Pray the prayers. Then watch and wait--God will fill you with wonder. I just know it! He really does wonder well. Prayer #1:  Mary--"How is this possible?"--a request for understanding ( Lk. 1:21-28 ) Prayer #2:  Mary--"Glory to God!"--a song of praise ( Lk. 1:21-55 ) Prayer #3:  Joseph--"What should I do?"--a prayer of grief and confusion ( Mtt. 1:18-20 ) Prayer #4:  Wisemen--"Where is ...

  1 Thessalonians 5:18--"G ive  thanks  in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus." Oh, Lord,  Thank you for a day that reminds us to be grateful. Forgive me that I need to be reminded of your grace, that I ever complain about the thousand blessings you lavish on me. Lord, thank you for your unconditional and unrelenting love. During this difficult year, you have never left me. You hold me in your hands and protect me. You sit with me in grief and hear my prayers. You are good and generous, and you never leave me or forget about me. And you never hurt me. I am safe with you. Thank you for all of it, even the hard parts. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Oh, Lord, I'm taking off for two days. I don't want to take off from you. I want to lean into your Spirit, enjoy your world, fellowship with your daughters. I feel my heart settling down in happy silence and peacefulness . Thank you for creating a beautiful world for me to enjoy. Thank you for friends . Thank you for mental and emotional breaks. Refresh me. You are my majestic mountaintop, my vast ocean, my fragrant garden, my lush meadow, my quiet forest, my rushing river. You are in everything and you sustain everything, including me. I praise you and thank you. Amen. "He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul." - -Psalm 23:3

Dear Lord of heaven and earth, Thank you for another year . It's a blessing. All of it. Life is a gift. Thank you. Thank you for my family, friends, children, and the means to communicate with them and enjoy them. Thank you for my marriage and my home. Thank you for a safe neighborhood, running water and electricity, new clothes, food choices, electronics and appliances, cars, heat, air conditioning, comfort. Thank you for the ability to get things I want or need. Thank you for all that I take for granted in this country . I'm ashamed that I ever complain about what you provide for me. Thank you for the police and fire departments, for civil services, hospitals, schools, government. Thank you that although our institutions are flawed, that fairness, equality, and justice are still important in my country. Thank you for the right to vote and get an attorney if I need one. Once again, I'm ashamed that I feel entitled to better government and perfect living condit...

Lord God in heaven, We've entered the holiday season of giving. Thank you for giving Jesus as a Savior to save my soul. Thank for you for Thanksgiving and Christmas, for this season of peace, hope, gratefulness, and love. Fill me with your Spirit so I radiate your love during the next month. I want to be like you--completely generous, compassionate toward the poor and needy, thankful for your generosity, full of contentment and grace. Show me where and how to give of myself, my resources, my patience, my compassion, and my faith this season. May I not hoard the blessings you've given me. Make me a cheerful giver! In Jesus' holy name, Amen. For God so loved the world, He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. ( John 3:16) Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a  cheerful   giver . ( 2 Corinthians 9:7 )

It's November now. The month of Thanksgiving. In honor of the upcoming holiday and because how to be more thankful came up in discussions I had this weekend at both my books events, I am committing to you and to God that I will keep a Thankfulness Journal for the month of November. Every day, I will note what I am thankful for and print it. I'm attempting to stay away from the obvious things & people that find their way into all my prayers and take note of the million little details that make the human experience--and the Christian life--so worth living. I recommend reading Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts to help you with this process. It's breathtakingly beautiful. I'm also willing to guarantee that an intentional process of thanksgiving will change how to think about everything and will probably keep your Christmas spirit from digressing into consumerism (a side benefit). So here we go-- Nov. 1--old friends Nov. 2--the Psalms Nov. 3--crisp...

Dear Lord Jesus, Thank you for your love  and for demonstrating it through the love of a human family. What a beautiful concept! Thank you for creating each person in this world so carefully. Each is unique in personality and purpose. Thank you for the overwhelming blessing of children, parents, siblings, extended family. Thank you for everything-- for the struggles and the pain that living in community brings. Thank you for the joys and the surprises, the disappointments and the hope. Thank you for all of it because you use all of it to make us better and to prepare us for your purpose. Thank you for the love of my spiritual family, for friends at church, for mentors, teachers, and leaders, for all the people I'll never meet  who preached a sermon or wrote a book, or started a non-profit, or wrote curriculum that formed me and challenged me and changed me. Bless them for their service to me because they loved and obeyed you. I just need your Spirit...

Dear Lord in heaven, I feel weak today. So, so weak. Emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. I feel insufficient. Not enough. Less-than. I think you call this a strength because I'll to turn to you in my desperation just to survive. In my frustration , I might actually listen on you. Wait on you. Pray to you. Obey you. Trust you. This process makes me stronger because it gives your strength a chance to work in me and change me. You make me enough, just as I am, when I have you. I can do hard things when you're the strength behind my obedience. Thank you. You are so gracious and merciful. You love me, bless me, and guide me. I am in awe of how you work and why you decide to work in me and through me. I praise your name, O Most High. In Jesus' powerful name, Amen. "But he said to me, ' My grace  is sufficient for you, for my power  is made perfect in weakness.'  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about...

It's Thanksgiving week! Dear Lord Provider, Remind me of something each day with week to thank you for, and not just the normal things, like family, friends, food, and health. Thank you for the hard things. I want to be thankful for my failures because you are doing something even greater in me than I can anticipate. I want to be thankful for my time--may I use it to worship you rather than worship the things I want or the attention I crave. And may I not stress about the time I don't have. I want to be thankful for the waiting--this state I keep finding myself in, when I believe you are working but I can't see what you're doing. I even want to be thankful for times of pain because you use my pain to showcase your love; you heal my pain because you love me. Thankfulness reminds me of who I am and what you do for me. It reminds me to praise you for you who are. You are grace, mercy, love, hope. You are my past, my present, and my future, my All-in-All...

Oh, Lord, You astound me and make me feel grateful. When I look around my world--my house and work and family--or when I behold your natural creation of mountains and oceans and fields, I just shake my head with wonder. Wow. Thank you. Thank you for my family, my home, my church, all which sometimes frustrate me. Thank you for my freedom, which I take for granted. Thank you for life and health, which I really take for granted. Thank you for my mind, which isn't as quick as it used to be, but it's a blessing nevertheless. Thank you for the beauty of the world, for all its variety: for the marvelous expanse of nature and also for the cities and countries filled with people, who I misunderstand or don't think about at all. Thank you for your living Word, which I don't read as much as I should, although it inspires and changes me. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you through the church, which I often make about fulfilling me instead of about honori...

Dear Lord, Thank you for the rain and especially for not flooding my basement. Your mercies never fail. And apparently, the rain doesn't, either. But you know best. Amen.

Dear Lord God, I am blessed to live in America, a free country, even though I chafe under the ambition and corruption so often present in public officials. I am proud of our soldiers and civil servants, even though I read stories of their brutality and injustice in the news. I appreciate the protection I have to believe, write, live, and worship, even though I recognize our country's moral decline. We are a sinful people and a sinful nation, and yet you choose to love us and use us. You have blessed us with opportunity and responsibility, and so much good has been accomplished in the world through our nation. Because of your love and mercy. Thank you for the men and women who have served our country, faced danger, missed loved ones, endured trauma, fought to recover, and came home. Thank you for the ones who paid the ultimate sacrifice with their lives so we could enjoy freedom. Bless their families and cover them with your loving care. Thank you for tr...

Dear Lord, All your ways are good. I believe you love me. When life is difficult, and circumstances don't go my way, I believe you love me, and you're working out a plan to mature me. When people and struggles are cruel and unforgiving, I believe you love me, and you're teaching me something about myself and about yourself. When you bless me with family love and encouraging friendships, I believe you love me. Yet you don't love me any more when my life is easy than when it is hard, even thought that seems true to me. Ease is not better proof of your love, but it does reveal the degree of my faith in you. Thank you for your patience with me, for your long-suffering nature that understands how many times it takes for me to believe and accept truth, especially truth of your sacrificial and eternal love. As if you had something more to prove! Living by faith and not by sight is hard for me-- I so easily forget that you are love, all the time, ...

Dear Lord-Provider, Thank you for answering my prayers. I'm grateful for your blessings, even when they happen in your timing and not mine. (Your way always seems way too long in coming.) I'm trying to believe that your timing is perfect, even when I can't see that it is. I know I need patience and faith to trust you. I'm glad you're working on this in my life, even though I hate it. I love you. In my feeble, pathetic, human way, I love you. And I desire to love you more all the time, not just when you bless me. Until you make me wait another time and then bless me again after I've waited, I just want to say-- I believe in your timing. I'm grateful for the blessings I understand and the ones I don't. I trust your will for your gifts that are coming, no matter what they look like at the time I receive them. Amen.

Dear Father, Thank you for my children. Thank you for their imperfections and their struggles. Thank you for walking through life with them, speaking into their lives, using every hardship and every conflict to re-orient them to you. And you don't hurry or panic when they don't learn the lesson the first or second or hundredth time. You keep loving and showing yourself to them by bringing influencers across their paths, by painting nature all around them, by making your Word alive and powerful in their hearts and minds. Thank you for being their God, as much as you are my God. You have a future and a hope for them, a destiny of your design. You will use all their mistakes, all their experiences, all my failings and my influence to mold them into the people you want them to be. I am in awe of your goodness and your sovereignty. Why do I worry? My children were your children first, your perfect, unique creations, an expression of yourself, with ...

This is a poetic prayer about how the crucifixion affects my life. Dear Jesus-- Because of the cross, you understand pain; you can erase suffering-- your healing I'll gain. Because of the cross, you can understand sin; your gift of forgiveness will grant peace within. Because of the cross, you drew your last breath; in becoming mortal, you freed us from death. Because of the cross, my debt has been paid; no longer I'm guilty a daughter you've made. Because of the cross, I have access to you; you hear all my prayers, you make dreams come true. Because of the cross, I will live saved and free; no longer I'll struggle with whom I should be. Because of the cross, I'm changed every day; I live life with purpose, for you've shown me the way. Amen image by Suzy Dubot

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord of Creation, How do You do it? Year after year, spring astounds me. Thank you for the beauty of the flowers, the budding trees, the singing of birds as they flitter through the branches, gathering twigs for their nests. Thank you for creating such incredible details and weaving the world together in a tapestry of majesty. Your love is boundless, and I am awed by You. Amen. image by  Bobby Mikul

Dear Lord Jesus, the Bridegroom of the Church, You understand everything about marriage, even though you were never married. (You created marriage, after all.) And you created me and my husband, so you fully anticipated the areas where we would clash and the areas we would jell. Thank you. Even when we disagree or become irritated, because of you, we grow stronger. We grow deeper in love and appreciation for each other and more awed by your love and grace. Thank you for my marriage--for all of it-- for the good days and the difficult days, for the joys and sorrows, for the realism of living my whole adult life with one person. I am the luckiest girl alive. You have blessed me so much! Thank you, thank you thank you! I love you, Amen.

Dear Lord God Jehovah, I'm having a heavy heart kind of day. I've been remembering sad things, things that make me feel disappointed and hopeless. I want to crawl into a corner and shut out life. That's where You come in. You've showed up many times during my life when the joy of living has vanished and memories haunt. And You feel what I feel, at the moment when I feel it. Even though I feel alone, You are with me. I must remember who You are and what You do-- what You have always done for me. You fill me with unexplainable comfort. You cradle my heart with warm hands and soothe the heavy space inside that hurts. You're the reason I pray. I don't pray because I want answers. I pray because You are the only Answer. Thank you for doing Your work in me, through pain, through confusion, and through thanksgiving. Thank You for the memories of You. Amen.