Heavenly Father I continue to offer up praise to You for You are my creator, my King and the essence I strive to know. I am completely nothing without Your breathe (word) giving me life.
Holy Spirit I ask forgiveness for letting the world affect me sometimes and make me anxious. Forgive me for being like Peter when he got out of the boat walked on the water and was fine until he took his eyes of Jesus and looked at the storm of the world around him, then he sank. Help me to be like Peter and cry out to Jesus regaining my focus and getting up and walk back to the boat. Help me to take to heart what Paul wrote in Romans 8:31-39—What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, yes, who is risen, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities nor powers, neither things present nor things to come, neither height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I know Christ told us life would be anything but easy this while we are here on the earth. I also know that I will be tested and that because I live in a fallen world I will witness and may even face death, disease, sickness, sorrow, brokenness but I must keep looking at Jesus my Savior who intercedes for me day and night. I also understand that the more I follow Paul’s advice when he wrote, Romans 12:1&2—Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. I know that if I abide more in Christ through You the Holy Spirit the less I let this world have any affect upon me. My strength comes from my joy which comes from the hope and faith that lies within me that I will make it to eternity and hear the words, “welcome my good and faithful servant.”
Holy Spirit help me and the others who walk beside me to run our race steadily like a marathon and to be emboldened knowing we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses and to encourage each other along the way. Help me to put all my trust in You and to let worry fall of me like drops of rain. Help me to learn to be in the spirit with You at all times communing so that I have my attention, priorities in place to protect me from this world of chaos around me. In Jesus’ name, amen.