A Heart for God

I want to share a prayer that I came across called “A Heart for God.” It’s an appropriate prayer for any follower of Christ to pray, and seems particularly appropriate as a prayer to offer as we begin the new year:

God of my hopes and dreams,

If I am going to live my life for you and your glory alone,
I must die to all of those forces surrounding me that demean life and make it less than you have intended it to be.
To be a follower of Christ, my soul and mind and spirit need to be renewed, so I can become more like him.
If I am to be renewed by your love, then you must transform my heart; you must change my hopes and dreams.
Therefore, make me humble, Lord. Enable me to think rightly about myself. Remind me daily of my total dependence upon you, your grace and mercy in my life.
Gift me with a solid faith that is mighty because it is rooted in you.
Deliver me from the power of sin and strengthen me against temptation through the revelation of Christ in my heart.
Plant the seed of hope in the center of my spirit.
And to humility, faith, and hope add the most important thing – love. Direct every desire, thought, word, and action toward your will. May I have no other end in sight – no cherished hope or dream – other than a loving relationship with you.
You exalted Jesus because he humbled himself, and you gave him a name above all other names. I pray that my life of self-sacrificing love – patterned after his own – might be an act of praise worthy of his honor.
Give me courage to build my life on this foundation, and this foundation only – that of Christ who emptied himself of everything but love.
Bear witness with my humble spirit then that I am your true child. Through self-denial and freely offered love to others, help me to find my life by giving it away and thereby experience the joy of the promises you make to all your children.
As I fight the good fight of faith, transform my heart with your love, I pray. Amen.

The life of faith is a life of transformation and change. It’s a life of sacrifice and risk. It’s a life of servanthood and love. More than anything, it’s a life rooted in a relationship with the One who seeks to mold us and shape us into the person whom God created us to be.

As we start fresh in a new year, we might consider a focus on the God of the cross, which would cause us to pray together “. . . transform our hearts with your love, we pray . . .”

See you in church!

Grace and Peace,