Morning Prayer
Father, I commit this day to you. I abandon all outcomes to you today.
May I be lead by you Holy Spirit, and not try to lead you.
Show me, Jesus, who to minister to today. Please empower me with your grace to be fully present in each moment of every interaction.
Waking Prayer
Lord, I wake up to You. To Your beautiful and unmediated Presence. You sat by me as I slept, You watched over me through the night, and brought me in safety to this new day. You greet me with Your loving smile this new morning, eager to love me and guide me another day in this life. May I return Your smile this day by how I live it, and in my minute-by-minute sharing of it with You.
May You be blessed by our co-laboring, and Your will be done in all things as I seek oneness with You, my loving Father, Giver of Life, and Bestower of blessing.
And if You call me home today, please let me return to You in peace. I ask You, Father, to grant peace to all those near to me, both close and far.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Your Son, and in Your Spirit who moves us, I live in Your embrace. Amen.
Simple Gratitude
Thank you Lord that I can see
Thank you Lord that I can pee
Thank you Lord that I can walk
Thank you Lord that I can talk
Thank you for the rain that falls
Thank you for the season, Fall
Thank you much for health and growth
The easy, the painful, thanks for both
Praise to you for everything
For without you there’s not a thing
But thanks to you there’s everything
~August 18, 2018
Prayer Of Authority (by Richard Foster)
In the strong name of Jesus Christ I stand against the world, the flesh, and the devil. I resist every force that would seek to distract me from my center in God. I reject the distorted concepts and ideas that make sin plausible and desirable. I oppose every attempt to keep me from knowing full fellowship with God.
By the power of the Holy Spirit I speak directly to the thoughts, emotions, and desires of my heart and command you to find your satisfaction in the infinite variety of God’s love rather than the bland diet of sin. I call upon the good, the true, and the beautiful to rise up within me and the evil to subside. I ask for an increase of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
By the authority of almighty God I tear down Satan’s strongholds in my life in the lives of those I love, and in the society in which I live. I take into myself the weapons of truth, righteousness, peace, salvation, the word of God and prayer. I command every evil influence to leave; you have no right here and I allow you no point of entry. I ask for an increase of faith, hope, and love so that, by the power of God, I can be a light set on a hill, causing truth and justice to flourish.
These things I pray for the sake of him who loved me and gave himself for me. – Amen.
From Prayer: Finding the Hearts True Home by Richard Foster
Prayer Before Reading
Let the world be silent before me so that I may encounter You, the risen Christ, and experience the peace of God. By the Spirit I live and move and have my being. Nothing so animates me as You. Enter into me now the Divine Presence, and fill me to overflowing, as You teach my humbled heart your incomprehensible ways.
THE PRAYER PROCESS BY MATTHEW KELLY from THE FOUR SIGNS OF A DYNAMIC CATHOLIC (2012) his website: DynamicCatholic.com
In The Prayer Process we take time – a minute, two minutes or maybe ten minutes – to spend time with the Lord every day. Pick a specific time when you will pray; ex. Morning Prayer or Night Prayer. It is an intentional way that we grow in our faith. The seven steps of The Prayer Process are as follows:
- Gratitude: Begin by thanking God in a personal dialogue for whatever you are most grateful for today.
- Awareness: Revisit the times of the past twenty-four hours when you were and were not the-best-version-of-yourself. Talk to God about these situations and what you learned from them.
- Significant Moments: Identify something you experienced today and explore what God might be trying to say to you through that event (or person).
- Peace: Ask God to forgive you for any wrong you have committed (against yourself, another person, or Him) and to fill you with a deep and abiding peace.
- Freedom: Speak with God about how he is inviting you to change your life, so that you can experience the freedom to be the-best-version-of-yourself.
- Others: Lift up to God anyone you feel called to pray for today, asking God to bless and guide them.
- Finish by praying the Our Father.
Prayer of “Unoffense”
There is nothing the world or the people in it can do to offend me. My guide and my freedom is in God alone. Show me love for those who do not show me love, patience with those who show me none, kindness to those who treat me unkindly. Let my response to unfairness be quiet calm. May my thoughts, words, and actions be pleasing to You!
Prayer of Trust
Father, I resolve this day to actually live in Your love. To live in trusting that You only want what is best for me. I will not doubt You at any moment, for You are true at all times. You are at all times loving, wise and ready to help, ready to provide.
No good thing will You withhold from those who walk uprightly. I know You want what is best for me. Anything You allow is for my ultimate good. Tho it may be painful for a moment, it is only for the molding of myself toward perfection, which is to be just like Your Son, Jesus. He was the only perfect human being. Why? Because He was the only one totally surrendered to You, never doubting Your care.
In faith, I will live in the fact of Your being in control. My mind shall be daily set on things above, on You, not merely on the short-sighted, visible things of earth. In this will I live, talk, act, and be truly me, only in You.
Amen.
Peace Prayer (Francis of Assisi)
Lord, make me an intsrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; when there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
The Serenity Prayer (Reinhold Neihbur)
God grant me the
SERENITY to accept the thing I cannot change;
COURAGE to change the things I can; and
WISDOM to know the difference
Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, the sinful world as it is, not as I would have it: Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.
Prayer for Entering Retreat
God, I am here today to be away from the city lights in order to see more clearly the beauty of Your nite sky. Your voice is so beautiful, like nothing spoken of men, and to hear it clearly is what I long for and come here for today.
To hear You speak.
A word from You drowns out a thousand cacophonic voices of pessimism and doom. I come here to further train the ear of my heart to attune to You, so that I may hear You clearly, even when in the midst of chaos and noise. Today, I escape to You.
There is none like You.
Prayer of Release
Lord, I release my expectations and come to You more bare, with a holy and trusting expectancy. May I truly abandon all outcomes to Your infinite goodness and divine wisdom, giving up my need for answers, contenting myself to sit in Your Presence, wrapped in Your Love, which is enough.
Watching, Waiting
What do You need
But me
Watching, waiting
What do You use
But me
Watching, waiting
What do You want
But me
Watching, waiting
For You
For You
For You
In the midst of the storm
I strain my eyes
For a glimpse of all that matters.
And upon that view,
That beautiful view,
I sigh, I rest, and I stay.
It is here I am home
And nowhere else
But locked eyes, and in union with You.
Prayer of Contentment
May I simply do whatever I can today, each day, for You, and be content and satisfied with that. Leaving what is unfinished in Your hands, trusting in You to complete what I am unable to. Tho I want to get to everything, I know that I cannot, nor should I because I’m not meant to.
Thank You for seeing to running the universe, and for entrusting a very tiny but important portion of it to me that only I can do. Please keep me in my place, relying on You, doing what I’m made to do.
All glory, praise, and honor to You for creating me as one of Your imagers. Clean the mirror of my soul that it may more and more clearly reflect who You are. Guide and instruct me to remove all obstacles blocking a clear reflection.
All for the sake of Him who suffered and died for me, who knows me best, who knows best.
Amen.
~Palm Sunday April 5, 2020