Heavenly Father I praise You today for allowing me to grow through all the different lessons life throws my way. I praise You for the tough times, the hard times, the disappointments, discouragements, trials, and heartaches. I praise You for the special times like when I got married, being there for the birth of my children, and seeing them grow to be adults. I praise you for both the sunny days and the stormy days for this makes me understand who I am in You and how my faith really is.
Holy Spirit Your word says: We boast in our afflictions because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. [Romans 5:3-5, CSB] I can’t say that I boast in my afflictions, but I do recognize what they have done to change my life. I am so thankful for Your Spirit dwelling in me to keep me moving forward and keeping the hope of eternal life with God someday. I have learned to trust in new ways and to grow my faith beyond the mustard seed size. I have a long way to go to be close to the people of the Bible who were considered people of faith, but I am striving and learning.
Holy Spirit teach me to take a breath each day and see the wonder God has placed around me. Help me to truly give my life to worshiping, serving, and glorifying You. Help me not let all the trials, hard times, and storms of life I face, cause me to give up, quit, or lose my faith. Peter put it best when he wrote: The God of all grace, who called me to His eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, strengthen, and support me after I have suffered a little while. To Him, be dominion forever, Amen. [1 Peter 5:10, CSB]
Holy Spirit help me to focus on living as a living sacrifice for You every day so that I may know, understand, and do Your will. Help me to renew my mind to only focus on Your word, Your wisdom, Your desires, and Your creation so that I can be thinking with the alignment of Your Spirit. Let the words I speak, the meditation I give to Your word, principles, and will, be acceptable to You, the One who created me, came to earth as a man and was sacrificed for my sins, and then gave me hope through His resurrection, and now dwells within my heart and is an intercessor for me.
But you, man [or woman] of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen. 1Timothy 6:11-16