Dear Lord...

I created this prayer for myself, to read aloud every morning - I started doing it this week and it has already been such a blessing to me - so I thought I'd share it here. There is so much power in the Word of God...in His promises and in His words of love and comfort. These are the promises He has made, the identity He has given each of us...for as different as we all are, and for all the ways in which we are unique, we all share a commonality that could never be denied or broken in that every one of us is the creation and child of God and an heir to His kingdom...we all share the exact same identity...

O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. (Ps 139:1-3) For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! (Ps 139:13-17) Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Ps 139:23-24)

The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation (Ps 118:14). I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness (Is 61:10) He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will (Eph 1:4-5). I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal 2:20). And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For those God knew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. And those he predestined, he also called: those he called he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified (Ro. 8:28-30)

I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all he earth (Ro 9:17)

Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise His holy name...(3) who forgives all my sins and heals all of my diseases, who redeems my life from the pit and crowns me with love and compassion, who satisfies my desires with good things... (Ps 103:1-5). Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Ro 12:1-2) Don’t you know that you yourself are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? (1 Cor 3:16). You are controlled not by your sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. (Ro 8:9). You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of son ship...the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are Gods children (Ro 8:15-16)

It is by grace you have been saved, through faith and not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works so that noone can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which, God prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph 2:8-10) Live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. (Eph 4:1-2) Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Eph4:31-32)

Finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against the flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything to stand. (Eph 6:10-13)

Create in me a pure heart, O God and renew a steadfast spirit within me (Ps 51:10) for if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Cor 5:17). Therefore, fix your eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor 4:18)