Prayer Asking God To Draw Us Close and Work In Us

 Asking God To Work In Us

On this Sunday, a day to rest and reflect on the goodness of God and His presence in our lives, we turn to some familiar prayers from the Bible to help us be drawn close to the Lord once again.  We’ll change the pronouns to make these prayers personal for all of us.

We’ll begin by praying with Saint Paul with a simple request for grace and peace and then ask for wisdom and understanding.

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give us grace and peace. Philippians 1:2

God, fill us with the knowledge of what You want. We pray You will give us the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives. Then we will be able to lead a life that is worthy of You, Lord.

We pray that we will please You in every way. We want to bear fruit in every good thing we do. We pray that we will grow to know God better. We want to be very strong, in keeping with Your glorious power. We want to be patient.

We pray that we will never give up. We want to give thanks with joy to the Father. You have made us fit to have what You will give to all Your holy people. We will all receive a share in the kingdom of light.  Colossians 1:9-12

It’s so easy to feel like giving up, isn’t it?  God is able and willing to help us stay strong.  During these long months of the pandemic, God wants to work in us so we please Him in every way and actually be more fruitful than we ever have before.  We wonder how that could possibly be since we can have so few face-to-face contacts but God has a way of doing things that can surprise us, doesn’t he. 

Remember Saint Paul in prison for so long yet praying for his friends and writing letters to them that have sustained believers for many centuries.  Who would have guessed it in his time?  Who knows how God will use us and what He is doing is us during these days for great good during the rest of our lives and beyond.  And so we pray for God to work this in us:

We pray that our love will grow more and more and that it will be based on knowledge and understanding. Then we will be able to know what is best. We will be pure and without blame for the day that Christ returns. We will be filled with the fruit of right living produced by Jesus Christ. All these things bring glory and praise to You, God.  Philippians 1:9-11

We keep asking that You, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that we may know You better. We pray that the eyes of our heart may be enlightened in order that we may know the hope to which You have called us, the riches of Your glorious inheritance in us, Your holy people, and Your incomparably great power for us who believe. Ephesians 1:17-19

We gather our prayers with the words of the Lord’s prayer:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name.  Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.  For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever.  Amen

We end with words of praise to God who is able to do so much more than what we can even ask of Him or imagine:

Now to him who is able to establish us in accordance with the gospel, the message proclaimed about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all might come to the obedience that comes from faith—to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.  Romans 16:25-27

Well, these are not days for answers but they are days for trusting God and growing in grace.  Let’s do that today, shall we?  Have a great day.