Tag: favor

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

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To Please You with My Prayers

Loving Lord,
One of the great joys of being adopted into your family by your gracious gift of faith is this: our lives are pleasing in your sight. How humbling it is that we should be able to carry out a single deed, speak a single word, or consider a single thought that would ever be pleasing to you. Nevertheless, because we are completely clothed with your righteousness, it is so!

Therefore, make even my prayers pleasing to your ears. Mature me to set aside selfish requests. Guide me instead along the paths of your plans and purposes for my prayers. Help me to maintain the proper balance between requests that center on the physical and temporal and the spiritual priorities that matter much more both now and into eternity. Let my heart beat with care and concern for others, routinely bringing their needs before you, since this, too, is pleasing to you. Move me to pray for those over me, beside me, and beneath me, so that your gracious favor and blessing extend to all those around me. 

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

DAILY PRAYERS FOR GUYS

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To Imitate Joseph

Forgiving Father,
When Joseph revealed himself to his brothers visiting him in Egypt, two things stood out about his handling of the situation that I want to imitate. First, even with all the traumatic experiences in his past that had taken place to get him to that point, he displayed complete confidence in your navigation of it all for the greater good. He knew you were using those seasons of adversity, during which he must have felt hopeless at times, to ultimately bless and save many lives through his leadership. Remind me during hard seasons in my life of how capable you are of bringing your blessing out of any situation imaginable, and lead me to trust that you are doing just that.

Secondly, even though Joseph was in a position to ignore, shame, severely punish, or even put to death his brothers for their past treatment of him, he harbored no ill will and showed them nothing but love and affection. How hard this is when others mistreat me! I prefer to ruminate over how poorly I was treated, bathe in bitterness, or scheme to get even in some fashion. But Joseph’s is the better way, because it is your way. You did not treat those who mistreated you the way they deserved to be treated. Instead, you forgave them; you forgave me. Give me the same spirit that is eager to forgive and reconcile, no matter the wrong carried out against me, just as Joseph and Jesus did.  

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.