Prayer On Valentine's Day

VALENTINES DAY

It’s Valentine’s Day today.  This day is meant to remind us of love and hearts joined together in friendship and commitment.   God has shared His heart with us and invites us to share our hearts with Him. 

We’ve often been too busy with pursuing relationship with other human beings to give much attention to God’s offer of love and friendship.  As good as those relationships are for us, they will never give us what we need at the deepest places of our heart.  Only God can meet us there and make us fully human – as He intended – so we can then live well in loving relationship with others. 

Many cards and gifts with hearts on them are exchanged with friends and loved ones today.  God is offering to us a beautiful heart – a healed and forgiven heart, a heart we desperately need to replace our broken and wounded hearts. 

I’ll pour pure water over you and scrub you clean. I’ll give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you. I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed. I’ll put my Spirit in you and make it possible for you to do what I tell you and live by my commands.” Ezekiel 36:25-27

Lord we want to give You our hearts today.  Pour pure water on us and scrub us clean.  Give us that new heart and new spirit that we so desperately need.  Remove the stone heart from us and replace it with a heart that wants Your will not our own, that follows Your commands rather than wandering off in destructive self-will.  We need healing.  We need Your kind of love that looks beyond the frailties and failures of others and allows Your powerful love to overcome difficulties between us. 

See what amazing love the Father has given us! Because of it, we are called children of God. And that’s what we really are!  1 John 3:1

Help us today, God, to live as Your beloved sons and daughters and to share that love simply and consistently with others. We celebrate the lavish love You have poured out on us and now, in turn, we want to reach out to others and pour out this wonderful love from You to them. 

There really is no better friend we could have than You.  You loved us so much that when we were a mess and unable to make ourselves attractive to You, You sent Jesus to die for us so we could be made clean and whole.  Filled with Your goodness because of Jesus, we want to reflect this same love to others. 

Your word reminds us:  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:34-35

So, Loving God, on this Valentine’s Day, help us to recognize and respond to the many expressions of love and kindness You send our way.  Help us many times today to pause and give thanks for Your faithful and unfailing love.  You are the best friend and companion a person could ever have.  Amen