Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. - Romans 12:1
He answered, “ 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;' and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" - Luke 10:27
The day-to-day journey comes with a fair amount of road wear. Our lives need “upkeep”; specifically, attention and maintenance to our hearts. All of us are affected by life’s drama—the cumulative affect of living in a fallen world and battling with a sinister enemy that Jesus said, "has come to steal, kill and destroy" (John 10:10) and a flesh/false self that (if not attended to) will run off-road and over what ever ditch it can to leave us compromised and injured.
Prayer to orient ourselves to God is a significant way to give attention to our inner being and start each day prepared for what will meet us on the path.
The challenge for me in offering myself each day is "HOW?" There is a humble way to stand, a gentle confidence that is needed in the face of our enemies. When I was growing up, grade school started every day with The Pledge of Allegiance. Orienting prayer is a lot like that … pledging myself to God once again, and declaring my love for Him again, and restoring myself to the relationship that matters most—the one for which I was made—and taking a place that is both glorious and wonderful as God’s image-bearer, His Beloved Son.
Surrender is a good thing if whom you are surrendering to is the most loving, kind, strong, and gracious being in the universe. Pledging allegiance is a great way to surrender, and The Daily Prayer—an oriented way to pray—puts first things first and allows me to at least start my day heading in the right direction.
I invite you to step into The Daily Prayer with Zoweh and our Allies every Monday on The Daily Orientation—declaring what is true, receiving what is ours, and aligning our hearts with God's. It is a great way to get up and clean up for a day of battle, and the road wear that can collect, and eventually encumber, all our hearts from being able to live free and love well.
The Daily Prayer - Paragraph 1
My dear Lord Jesus, I come to you now to be restored[1] in you – to renew my place in you, my allegiance to you, and to receive from you all the grace and mercy I so desperately need this day. I honor you as my sovereign Lord, and I surrender every aspect of my life totally and completely to you. I give you my body as a living sacrifice; I give you my heart, soul, mind and strength; and I give you my spirit as well. I cover myself with your blood[2] – my spirit, my soul and my body. And I ask your Holy Spirit to restore my union with you, seal me in you, and guide me in this time of prayer.
An excerpt from The Daily Prayer Memory Verse Cards.
