A Prayer
I find it helpful to read and pray the prayers of other saints. My baptistic impulses react negatively toward this practice. Somehow it became my preconceived notion that extemporaneous prayers are the only legitimate and acceptable prayers. That’s my default attitude. But I have come to see that most of my “off the cuff” praying can become vapid and repetitive.
Reading the prayers of the saints helps me learn how to pray better. Even praying their prayers is helpful. I find they are often saying the kinds of things I want to say in a better way than I could have said it.
That’s my reason for including other people’s prayers once in a while in the daily devotional email. My suggestion is that you read through the prayer at least once before you make it your prayer. You want to be able to pray intelligently, and knowing what the prayer says before you pray it is important. After you have read it through, go back and pray it through. Speak it to the Lord. Make it your own.
This prayer is from the Protestant reformer Thomas Becon:
O Lord, take away that which is mine, which is all naught, and give me that which is yours, which is all good. You are called Christ: anoint me therefore with your Holy Spirit. You are called a Physician: according therefore to your name, heal me. You are called the Son of the Living God: according therefore to your power, deliver me from the devil, the world, the flesh. You are called the resurrection: lift me up therefore from the damnable state wherein I most miserable lie. You are called the life: quicken me up therefore out of this death, wherewith through sin I am most grievously detained. You are called the way: lead me therefore from the vanities of this world, and from the filthy pleasures of the flesh, unto heavenly and spiritual things. You are called the truth: suffer me not therefore to walk in the way of error, but to tread the path of truth in all my doings. You are called the light: put away therefore from me the works of darkness, that I may walk as the child of light in all goodness, righteousness and truth. You are called a Savior: save me therefore from my sins according to your name. You are called Alpha and Omega, that is, both the beginning and the end of goodness: begin therefore a good life in me, and finish the same unto the glory of your blessed name.
Amen.
