1 Passage: Proverbs 15:1-5
1 Verse: Verse 4. A soothing tongue is a tree of life, but perversion in it crushes the spirit.
1 Prayer: Father, please give me a soothing tongue. Help me speak gentle words that are calm, encouraging and uplifting. Forgive me for saying harsh and inappropriate things that crush the spirit and stir up anger. Help me to replace those words with speech that brings life and turns away wrath.
1 Passage: Psalm 19:7-10
1 Verse: Verse 7. The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
1 Prayer: Thank You, Father, for answering our prayers. When we ask You for wisdom, You tell us exactly where to find it -- in Your word. Make me wise enough to desire Your sure and perfect truth above all else. Restore my soul.
1 Passage: Colossians 1:9-14
1 Verse: Verse 9. For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
1 Prayer: Father, so many times I come to You asking You to fill me with wisdom and understanding and the knowledge of Your will, yet so rarely do I unceasingly pray all those same things for others. Forgive me for being only focused on myself. Obviously, Father, I need Your wisdom, but I am not the only one who does. Help me to be like Paul, continuing to pray -- from the moment I hear about another's need -- that You would bless them with the fullness of all wisdom and understanding and knowledge of Your will. And help me to be wise today, too. Thank You, Father.
1 Passage: Hebrews 13:15-17
1 Verse: Verse 15. Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.
1 Prayer: Forgive me, Father, for fruitless lips that are at times more like the fig tree You cursed -- all showy leaves and no profitable produce -- than the humble little seed that You blessed, which yielded its crop one-hundredfold. You created these lips and this tongue for blessing, not cursing, and I want my words to be a pleasing sacrifice of praise and thanks to You. I owe You everything. Let me continually offer back to You praise and thanks for Your everlasting loving kindness.
1 Passage: Hebrews 12:4-11
1 Verse: Verse 7. It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
1 Prayer: Thank You, Father, for dealing with me as Your son whom You love. Forgive me for not recognizing Your discipline for what it is. I cry and moan and blubber and wail, without ever realizing that, because You are my Father and I am Your son, all these blows are really blessings. Only Your love could manage to take all our sufferings and sorrows and scourgings and somehow transfigure them into good news. But, for all that, I still don't welcome Your discipline. I'm still begging You to relent. Teach me what You want me to endure. Show me the faults that Your discipline is meant to correct. And help me to continue to resist sin, in the full assurance that You are with me to help me become the son You have created me to be.
1 Passage: John 4:34-38
1 Verse: Verse 38. "I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor."
1 Prayer: Thank You, Father, for sending me out to harvest. Thank You for making sure that I don't labor all alone out there. Thank You for the labors of others who have begun the work and continued it to this day. Help me to enter into their labor with my own efforts to sow and reap, however small these may be. Silence my oh-so-smart ideas about when and where and how and why to harvest, and open my eyes to see both the present ripeness of the harvest field and the richness of the reapings from it.
1 Passage: John 15:1-5
1 Verse: Verse 4. "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me."
1 Prayer: Thank You, Father, for figuring out a way for me to bear fruit. It is the most natural thing in the world for a branch to bear fruit -- but only when it remains a part of the tree. Please help me to remain connected. Help me to draw life and strength and nourishment from Jesus. And help my feeble little branch bear some fruit today -- even in the bleak midwinter.
