Five Daily Personal Pinpoint Prayers, Part 1
Here’s this week’s entry from Pray Big for Your Life.
The teachings in the Lord’s Prayer work great in a group setting or when you’re praying for your family, your roommates, or your church. But don’t miss the significance of praying these prayers for yourself. Jesus’s petitions in the Lord’s Prayer are some of the clearest and most direct personal pinpoint prayers ever written.
Based on Jesus’s teachings in the Lord’s Prayer, here are five pinpoint prayers you can pray for yourself on a daily basis. You’ll find that with just these five prayers, you address almost every need you’ll face on any given day.
Pray for perspective: Lord, let your name be hallowed in my life today. The significance of how Jesus opened this prayer is difficult to overstate. Rather than first approaching God with our needs, Jesus instructs us to seek the proper perspective on them. What we need most on a daily basis is for God’s name to be treated as holy (hallowed) in our lives.
This is a humbling prayer. It reminds us that the world does not revolve around us. A local cable provider in my city is running an ad that goes something like this: You want the meeting to start when you get there. You want the bus to leave when you’re ready. You want to catch your favorite shows when it’s convenient for you. You want to watch the game on your schedule. Basically, you’re at the center of your universe. We like the way you think! If we listen to enough of that kind of reasoning, it’s easy to start thinking that it is true. That’s why we need to begin every day praying for God’s name to be hallowed. It reminds us who the universe really does revolve around (so to speak), and who it doesn’t. It helps us remember that there is nothing in our lives as important as the holiness and glory of God.
When you’re battling with your flesh to keep yourself in the proper perspective, this is a great prayer to pray. Ask God for this attitude and mindset every day. Pray: Lord, let your name be exalted and declared as holy in my life today.
Pray for priorities: Lord, let your Kingdom be established and your will be done in my life today. As Jesus continued his prayer, notice that he still didn’t turn to the point of asking for personal needs and wants. There was one more area he wanted us to first address in prayer.
To pray for God’s Kingdom to be built in your life is to ask for God’s rule and reign to have its perfect way in you. You’re acknowledging that your heart and soul are God’s throne, and you’re inviting him to reign there. To pray for God’s will is to surrender to God’s plan for your life and to confess that you trust his judgment over your own. It’s to invite God’s course and curriculum for your life, no matter how difficult or painful.
When you pray this prayer, you’re praying that your words, attitudes, actions, spending habits, relationships, work ethic, recreation and spare time would all be places where his rule is welcome. You’re totally yielding every aspect of your life to God.
Can you see the significance of praying this prayer for yourself at the beginning of every day? Seeking God’s Kingdom and God’s will for your life through prayer helps to set the thermostat of your heart on “hot” when it comes to the things of God. It removes your right or expectation for negotiation with God on matters of obedience. And it makes you a pliable and usable tool in God’s hands.
Pray for God’s priorities to be worked out in your life. Pray: Lord, build your Kingdom and do your perfect will in my life today!
Pray for provision: Lord, please give me everything I need today. The prayer for daily bread is one of the most liberating, radical prayers a Christ-follower can pray. When you pray for God to give you your daily bread, you’re totally recalibrating your heart and mind to God’s definition of provision. This pinpoint prayer blows up any sense of entitlement that you may have before God. It puts your financial world in the proper perspective before God.
As I write these words, the church I pastor is facing a mild financial shortfall. We are coming off a year where our church members over-gave our budget by $400,000. But this year, our giving has been flat, especially in light of the fact that we’re still a rapidly growing church. The bean counters in our accounting office tell me that in just two months, we’ll be down to $200,000 in our savings account. Given that our budget is over $7 million, that’s not very much financial runway. But when I read what Jesus taught us about praying for provision, I have a difficult time feeling too concerned. That $200,000 we have in savings is exactly $200,000 more than Jesus promised us. He promised to meet our needs today. Honestly, I can’t think of a single thing that our church needs that we don’t have today. I can think of lots of things we want and some things we’re going to need, but there’s nothing that we need today that Jesus hasn’t already given us. And, that’s what he promised.
When you pray for God to provide for your daily needs, you help to boost your contentment levels. Discontentedness is at the root of things like greed and covetousness, both of which are disastrous to your relationship with God. But by praying for simple daily provision, you acknowledge that you don’t need much. You acknowledge that God’s love, mercy and presence are more important to you than material things.
Learn to pray for your daily bread. Pray to be content with what you have. Pray 1 Timothy 6:8 for your heart: Lord, if I have food and clothing, I will be content with that.
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