Category: Prayer

O Lord, America has lost its way
Save this nation from
greed, hatred, and confusion.
Convict and convert our president,
members of congress, our politicians,
our judges, and all that are in authority.
Protect those who are fighting the good fight,
be with them and give them courage.
Open the eyes of our citizens
and bring them to repentance.
Without Your intervention,
Lord, this nation will end.
Bring us back to righteousness,
truth, love, and compassion.
In Jesus’ name.
— Amen.

O Lord and Master,

Deliver me and keep me free from a spirit of idleness, despondency, ambition, and idle talk.

Rather give me a spirit of chastity, humble-mindedness, patience, and love.

O Lord King, grant me to see my faults and not condemn my brothers and sisters: for blessed are you unto the ages of ages.

Amen.

Why should you pray three times a day? Because David, Daniel, and Peter prayed three times a day. They set a model for us to follow.

David said, “Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, And He shall hear my voice” (Psalm 55:17 NKJV). Here it specifically says David prayer three times a day

The Prophet Daniel also got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously (Daniel 6:10). This was a habit of the devout.

In Acts 2:15, it says that Peter prayed with the church at “nine o’clock in the morning.” In Acts 3:1, “One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o’clock in the afternoon.” And in Acts 10:9, Peter went up to the housetop to pray at “about noon.”

This practice was passed down to the early Church. The Didache, the earliest document after the New Testament about Church practice. It says to pray the Lord’s Prayer “three times a day” (Didache 8:2-3).

Here we see a set prayer was repeated three times a day. Hence, the foundation for the liturgy of the hours, also known as the Divine Office.

“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer” (1 Tim. 4:4-5).

We should pray before we eat a meal. God is our Provider, therefore everything we receive is a gift. We should therefore receive the gifts of God “with thanksgiving.”

Even Pigs Grunt

I heard a preacher once say that even pigs grunt before they eat. It is true, they do. How much more should we thank our Creator for His providence?

I will share my little prayer that I use before meals. But there are many other examples you can find online. Use whatever one stirs you to thanksgiving.

My Meal Prayer

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this food, blessed it and nourish it to my body, through Christ my Lord. Amen.

Lately I have been studying the prayer habits of the Christian community through the ages. One practice that has really blessed me is praying the Psalms.

I have taken the structure of Psalter in the Common Book of Prayer and modified it to meet my needs. I work a swing shift, so I am not able to do both in morning and evening Psalms reading. So I turned the one-month cycle into a two-month cycle, by assigning each division to a new day. So day 1 evening reading becomes day 2 morning reading.

The next thing I needed was to simplify the Liturgy of the Hours for morning prayer into seven sections: Opening Prayers, Prayer for Forgiveness, Apostles’ Creed, Psalms, Intercessions, Closing Prayers, and Lectio Divina.

This has been an evolution in my prayer life, helping me stay consistent, scriptural, and inspired. You can catch the devotion and love of the Psalmist as you turn their words into your prayers.

There are adjustments that one has to make. Some Psalms are very vengeful and ask God to destroy the enemies. Here we can recontextualize these towards evil spirits and the devil. We can also think of Israel as the chosen people, which we now are. So there are adjustments that can be made as we make these prayers our own.