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January 1 - December 31, 2019
Lord, I confess that I am too proud to admit how proud I am. It is only as I read of your great humility in the gospels that I begin to see my lack of it. Show me more of this painful truth so that I can be more free from the poisonous effects of pride. Amen.
Lord, you ate with the tax collectors—collaborators with the Romans—as well as the prostitutes and sinners. When you were here on earth, you despised no one. You even ate with Pharisees—you were not bigoted toward bigots. Change my heart so I can walk in your footsteps. Amen.
They don’t look people in the eye to understand and engage them as equals.
They see others as a means to an end, as dispensers of acclaim, admiration, and other ways to bolster their self-image.
Pride makes sympathy nearly impossible. Pride keeps us from really noticing people, from putting ourselves in their shoes, from recognizing when they are hurting or unhappy.
Do people seek you out to talk to you about their problems? If not, is it because you are not very sympathetic?
Lord, I confess that my own self-pity and self-absorption make me impatient with people who have problems. I want to surround myself with “low-maintenance” people. But if you had done that, where would I be? Reproduce your sympathetic heart in me. Amen.
If our ego was working properly, we would know that true glory is to let a slight or irritation go without paying back.
Lord, today I was very touchy with someone. Yes, I was tired and stressed out over many things. But so what? You were under far greater stress and never shot back an angry word. Let me wonder and praise you for your patience until it begins to grow in me. Amen.
Lord, my pride makes me sometimes feel inferior and sometimes superior. It sometimes makes me too afraid and sometimes not cautious enough. It seems to be at the root of so many other things wrong with me. Do whatever it takes, Lord, to diminish its power in my life. Amen.
Lord, I need help with my tongue. I can speak intemperately and later regret what I’ve said. And I see some relationships that have been hurt by my ill-advised words. Teach me how to reach out in peace and make friends where I have potential enemies. Amen.
Lord Jesus, I still covet glory and honor, but I know I should serve without thought of getting credit. So hard! Make your selfless love for me so palpable and affecting that I don’t care what others think. Amen.
Immodest people exalt themselves in numerable ways. They do it in conversations—interrupting routinely, always assuming their thoughts are more penetrating and important.
Lord, the whole subject of humility is difficult to even approach. Even when I pray for it, I sense a secret self-satisfaction growing over my modest demeanor. All I can say is that, Lord God, be merciful to me a sinner, and never let me forget I am only that—a loved sinner. Amen.
The first step to remedying ignorance is to know the full extent of your ignorance. “If anyone would like to acquire humility I can, I think, tell him the first step. . . . If you think you are not conceited, you are very conceited indeed.”
Lord, teach me the absolutely essential spiritual skill of repentant self-examination, but help me to avoid the self-absorption of morbid introspection. Amen.
Father, your Son is now my great advocate (1 John 2:1). His shed blood defends me against the penalty of the eternal moral law. In him I am pardoned and accepted. Why, then, do I feel the need to defend myself all the time? Take away my need to do so by reminding me of my wonderful high priest. Amen.
The irony is that pride, which hates correction, inevitably leads to public failures that bring shame, a translation of a Hebrew word that means to be taken lightly. So human arrogance brings about its own greatest nightmare.
Deliberately submit yourself systematically to correction from others.
You must lose your pride to find it rightfully. This can happen inside the church, if we take vows to submit to the counsel and instruction of wise leaders. This can happen in a marriage if we make it safe for our spouse to correct us. This can happen when we give Christian friends the right to speak to us regularly about our flaws and sins (Hebrews 3:13). It can happen, but only if you choose for correction to be a part of your life.
Lord, I don’t have enough people in my life I trust to correct me. I will need the patience and commitment to cultivate them and then the courage to open up to them. Give me both! Amen.
The church should be the place where people praise one another and not ourselves.
Lord, there has never been a society like mine, where the powerful forces of the media, marketing, and culture urge me to gratify my desires for comfort and pleasure. You died with only one possession—your robe. Oh, make me wise here, neither legalistically enjoying hardship for its own sake nor avoiding it. Amen.
Lord, so many things are neither bad nor good but to be used with discretion. It is wisdom to know what they are and how to use them wisely. Failure to discern has ruined many lives. Protect me and my loved ones from foolishness in regard to food and drink. Amen.
Lord, give me the right motives to ask for what I am about to ask. Let me make enough and have enough to “give without sparing” to many people. Amen.
Make me someone who does what I promise and finishes what I start. Amen.
Lord, “when the set time had fully come,” you came (Galatians 4:4). Even you were attentive to opportunity and timing! I confess that I try to make the world fit my schedule rather than adapting to how things are. Give me a godly flexibility that trusts your plan more than mine! Amen.
Lord, the whole book of Proverbs works against my individualist spirit. I don’t like to think that people around me have any claim on my money, my time, and even the selection of my career. Give me the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:3–5). Impart it to me with your Word and Spirit. Amen.
Laziness is not just a temperament but a moral failing. Sloth is self-centered rather than loving. It is dishonest, “trying to sidestep the facts and one’s share of the load.”127 And it is extremely foolish.
Lord, I am anxious about the hardness of life. It makes me want to give up. But you promised to speak peace to your people (Psalm 85:8). So help me say to my heart: “Be still my soul: thy best, thy heav’nly Friend; through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.”128 Amen.
All work done well has a dignity in the eyes of God
If you’re not doing work, and work in which you can take pride, you’re being cut off from part of your humanity.
Any work that is useful to others and done with excellence is deserving of honor.
Lord Jesus, I live in a society that, in some places, overly values high-paying jobs that require years of education and, in others, deeply distrusts these same people. But these distinctions of class and status don’t matter to you. Let them not matter to me either. Amen.
So even if the bribe or lies are not exposed, if your heart is set on money in a greedy way, it will poison your character and weaken your family. But the one who puts integrity and service ahead of profit will live.
Greed destabilizes your life. Only God is completely reliable
Lord, I see people who are trusting in money but blind to it. How, then, do I know that I am not doing this too? Help me to dare to look at my heart and talk to my closest friends in order to discern my real spiritual attitude toward money. Amen.
The greed that can pay for the richest food will still starve the human soul of that for which it most hungers, because greed is self-serving and the opposite of self-giving love.
Lord Jesus, sometimes a lucrative job or deal will give us less time for family and friends. Sometimes we see we could make more money if we disadvantaged someone else. Lord, you lost power in order to fulfill your loving purpose for us. Let me never choose money over love. Amen.
“strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a [beautiful] woman is a necessary piece of apparatus.”
Real love moves you to give yourself fully to a particular man or woman. Lust works in the opposite direction. It wants to get a fulfilling, self-maximizing experience from the person.
If I allow myself to gaze at and lust after someone’s physical beauty, I too might be inflamed and steal it, taking it wrongly.
Sex without a promise of mutual whole-life commitment can lead one party to make a far greater emotional investment than the other, with agonizing results. Or it can teach both parties to use sex for pleasure and not for radical self-giving. Either way, it’s honey followed by hunger.
Lord, keep me from falling for the false promise of sexual joy and intimacy apart from marriage. That lie has destroyed so many. Help me learn how to defeat sexual temptation. Amen.
When God says, “You must give yourself sexually only to someone to whom you’ve given yourself wholly, legally, and permanently in marriage,” he is saying, “This fits who you are, who I made you to be.” Sin leads to alienation from your own nature and God’s created order, and that leads to destruction.
When people have sex outside marriage, maintaining their independence and right to walk away at any time, it turns sex into just a dispensed commodity, with both persons remaining detached and in control. Instead, sexual union should always and only take place between a husband and a wife who share every other kind of union—legal, social, financial, personal—in marriage. Then sex becomes both a sign of the union and a way to deepen it.
protect your people from the tragic mistake of thinking sex outside a marriage covenant is somehow, sometimes all right in your eyes. It isn’t.
Marriage brings growth that is impossible outside of the security of the bonded union. Because you cannot just walk away when things get difficult, it brings increased self-knowledge, emotional and spiritual growth, deep mutual affirmation and support, and the distinct joy you can have only in the presence of someone with whom you have been through thick and thin.
Lord, I see that true intimacy between human beings depends not on fleeting “chemistry,” sexual or otherwise, but on long-term commitment and faithfulness to helping the other person be all they should be before you. Let all my relationships—and not just marriage—reflect this insight from you. Amen.
“None learns the secret of freedom save only by way of control.”
