Saturday, January 28, 2012

A Prayer for Grace

Dear God,

We thank you for your abundant grace so freely given to our broken selves and world.  While we wait for eternity to fully realize the depth of your forgiveness and grace, we pray that we might learn to draw strength from it today.  We work so hard to be right, but let us not forget the priority of compassion and forgiveness.  Fill us with your grace so that we might truly put others before ourselves.  Your grace allows us to find contentment.  Free us from unrestrained consumption, the belief that because it is available that it is good.  Remind us that though all things may be permissible, that all things are not profitable.  Give us grace to resist our temptations.  We rely on our own strength and will too often seeking our own definition of good.  Without your grace, no amount of good is good enough, for only through you can we find redemption.

We lift to you this morning our burdens and needs God.  We know that you hear the cry of our heart.  Give us ears to hear and a heart to listen in return.  Your way is the way of peace and fulfillment God, we pray that you set our feet on that path as we look to our Savior Jesus as our guide.  We pray for our world, and troubles faced by our brothers and sisters of which we’re not even aware.  We pray for our nation and thank you for a system in which we our voices may be heard.  May our voices reflect the voice of hope, joy, peace, and love.  We pray for our community that we might forge relationships and connections that allow us to share life together, celebrating the good and mourning our losses, and continually striving to realize thy kingdom come.  We pray for ourselves, that you would reach into our very souls and shape us into the people you would have us to be for we realize that community, nation, and world will never be any better than the individuals who populate them.

We pray for your blessing God.  Give us knowledge for our minds, strength for our bodies, and courage and compassion for our hearts.  We ask for this not for our glory, but yours, that we might be your people in this world.  You are our God and for this we are thankful. 

Amen.