When God Seems Silent
May your eyes be opened to God’s comforting presence,
May your heart remember God’s faithfulness,
And may you trust that he is always there.
When You Long for Comfort
May the Lord go before you and make your steps firm,
May he fill you with peace as you walk journeys unknown,
May his presence be your greatest source of comfort,
And may he always and forever be your heart’s focus.
A Prayer for When You Need to Seek God
I’m reading a book on worship–what it is, what it’s not, and what it means for me as a follower of Christ. So often we start with the doing for God or we focus on becoming and we grow frustrated. Our doing seems unfulfilling and becoming becomes complicated so we either change our doing or chase after the latest way to “become.”
But what if we’re missing a couple of steps?
Seek
Matthew 6:33, “But seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.”
Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”
To seek: to go in quest of, to search, to find, to discover. Seeking is the first step in becoming and doing. We must seek God. We must turn our heart to discovering him in our everyday lives. And we must fix our minds on searching for him and his ways in our lives.
Know
Proverbs 24:3-4, “By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.”
John 10:14, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.”
To know: to understand clearly, to perceive, to have established in the mind, and to be aware of. The second step to becoming and doing is to know God. To know how he loves, his kindness, mercy, and grace and what it means.
The more we seek and know God, the easier it is to become who he intends for us to be and to know what we should be doing.
God doesn’t lead us on a merry chase, but guides and directs our steps–sometimes one step at a time–sometimes by leaps and bounds–but always closer to him.
If we’re frustrated with doing and despairing over becoming, let’s take a step back to seek and know God. Let that be our main focus and the other two will fall into place.
Prayer
Holy God,
We bow before you, awestruck by who you are. You are light and life, grace and mercy, just and right, and filled with love and power. Let our hearts draw near to you today. We seek you with all our hearts because we know that our desires are found and fulfilled in you.
We want to know you, Lord. You desire relationship and so we say, yes. Yes, Lord. Reveal yourself to us today as we seek your face. Without you our becoming loses its fire and our doing loses its purpose. Guide our steps and our hearts ever closer to you. Help us to know your voice and respond when you call.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
I’ll be praying that you fill your week with seeking and knowing God more.
xoxo
Jessica of Welcome Grace
The book I referred to at the top of this letter (click on the picture for the link).
A Prayer for Cups to Overflow in Your Life
Cups overflow or empty?
Our identity in Christ covers three basic needs: significance, security, and acceptance. It’s out of these three things that our ability to minister to others without experiencing twisting and turning based on their approval or disapproval flows. But so often, we forget who we are in Christ. We begin to think that the answers to this world’s difficulties rests on our ability to provide answers and service.
But the picture in Psalm 23 of the good shepherd, leading me by still waters, through death’s valley, and near pain’s shadow that I realize that it’s not up to me to carry all the burdens. I am weak and weary. Exhausted from the battle. It’s here, in the presence of my enemies, that I realize that God’s abundance in the midst of mess is for me and for you.
Our Cups Overflow
Further into Psalm 23 we read that He anoints our heads with oil and makes our cups overflow. In ancient Eastern culture, hosts anointed their guests with perfume as a sign of honor. The host would give their guest a cup and then were careful to fill it till it overflowed. This implied that while in the host’s presence the guest would have all the abundance the host could offer.
This is a beautiful picture of what it looks like when we abide in Christ. Our cups overflow as we hold our cup upright to receive from him. But so often, when we see the urgent in our life, we run around, holding our cups in a pouring position. Then, when cups run dry, we dash back to the Father for more filling. But what if we changed the position of our cups? What if we held them always in the upright position? This would allow the overflow of what God is doing in our lives to flow to those around us.
Our agendas would change. No longer would we treat our quiet time as a fill-up station, only pulling up for refuel when we’re empty. No longer would we feel the burden of the world’s cares on our shoulders and be overwhelmed by the great needs around us. Our position would be one of upturned cups, being continually filled and overflowing into the lives around us throughout our day.
Hold Your Cups Upright
This position, of holding our cups upright and realizing the overflow that comes from being together with Christ in every moment, releases us from the burden that service sometimes brings. Instead, we find ourselves able to do more than we ever imagined because our cups are always full.
Carrying our cup upright allows it to overflow into other’s emptier vessels. We discover that our confidence has nothing to do with our strengths. At the same time we learn that our insecurities don’t have to bind us to inaction.
Hold your cup upright and receive this blessing:
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that our of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:14-19 NIV
Other Prayers
A Prayer to Find Joy When Joy is Hard to Find
We help one another find joy because of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s keep walking in faith as we live in our present. Sometimes our “nows” fill us with excitement, and other times they fill us with trepidation. But God, in his infinite wisdom, gives us each other, the body of Christ, to strengthen and encourage and love one another.
Is your summer filled with joy? Or do you find yourself shaking your head in disbelief as you race to keep up with the days? God holds time in his hands as well as our hearts so we can trust him with these days.
Find Joy Scripture
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:6-9 ESV
Joy and grief rest side by side. Trials and faith work hand in hand. Fire and praise pull a response from our lips. We don’t see yet we do. This is the mystery of knowing God. It is the infinite wonder of a life surrendered to him. That we might know the fullness of the love of God and the ability to rejoice even when life takes our breath away.
How do we explain this joy? In these verses, Peter writes that it’s the type of joy that is inexpressible. It’s a joy that must be experienced to be understood. And to understand it, we must live our lives fully aware to our circumstances.
So in the days of busy and crazy, remember to breathe. Let’s inhale and exhale. See the sunrise and sunset. And always remember God is with us in the good and the hard. Joy shines when we remember your goodness to us.
Prayer to find Joy
Holy God,
We say, Holy, Holy, Holy are you, Lord. Your ways are higher than ours and yet, your thoughts are tender towards us. God, we ask that you would pour inexpressible joy on us as we believe you for peace, goodness, and your timing in our circumstances. How you love us and so we love you back.
Lord, we grieve. We grieve over our losses and disappointments, our wounds and our pains. We hold our brokenness up to you and surrender the pieces of shattered dreams to your healing touch. Touch us with your love that we might rejoice and bring you glory and honor as you reveal yourself to us.
Lord, we adore you. We surrender because you are love and even when we cannot see you, we trust you. Fill us with your joy as we walk in faith.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
From the Joy Series:
A Prayer for Joy When You Need It
A Prayer for Joy
Do you ever feel like joy hides like an elusive toddler? You can hear it laughing, but you can’t seem to find it? This week’s prayer for joy will help.
Life contains joys and sorrows. It brings us times of sweet fellowship and bitter loneliness. And sometimes these happen all in the same day!
Discovering joy, holding joy, and experiencing joy. We long for it. And it rests simultaneously with our sorrows and disappointment.
We can know joy even when we know pain because joy is a fruit that God’s spirit grows within us. And holding onto it in the midst of difficulties takes place when we turn out eyes to the Lord, set our hearts on him, and hold fast to courage.
Scripture
“The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17
Some thoughts
This verse hangs on a piece of art in my home. I walk by it multiple times a day, but it’s easy to let the assurances of it flow off my heart rather than into my heart. But if we were to let the truths it contains simmer in our hearts, joy wells up within.
God is with us. In the fire, in the rain, in the sun, and in the beauty in our lives.
He saves with might. His strength is directed towards us to save, not to harm, not to disappoint, but to help.
He delights in us. Not because he’s God and he should, but because he wants us. He wants you and me to know the delight he has for us.
His love quiets our hearts. Our inner worlds of worry and concerns, doubts and fears stirs up anxiety cyclones in our thoughts. But his love quiets us so we rest assured in his presence and love.
He sings over us. He rejoices because of us. This truth arrests me in my tracks because I don’t feel worthy to be sung over. I know my weaknesses and tendencies and I believe I’m worthy to be chastised, not sung over.
But this is grace and mercy in action. Let’s open our hands and in humility receive it the joy God longs to give us.
The Prayer for Joy
Holy God,
We praise your name and give you glory! You are with us and mighty to save. We need you now, right in the middle of our life’s stuff, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let us rest in you as you quiet our hearts and doubts. You are good and your kindness and mercy is forever.
May you be so very real to us in this moment and let us hear your song for us. As you delight in us, we delight in you and know joy. Joy is your gift to us, to carry us through the sorrows and pains, to hold us together when we face our darkest nights. You are our joy and we rejoice because of who you are.
We love you and give you glory and honor and all praise. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
The Joy Series:
An Article to help you respond in grace to judgmental people:
How to Answer a Judgmental Person With Grace
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