A prayer based on Psalm 16:2.

<aside> 🙏🏻 Heavenly Father, We worship You. We praise You. We give our thanks to You. We adore You. For You are the fountain of life and of joy. Apart from You we have no good thing. Without You as our Lord through faith in Jesus we have no happiness or delight that will satisfy. How foolish we are then, to have chased, even in this last week, after joy in created things, good gifts, rather than You our Creator and Giver.

We thank You that You have made known to us the path of life. The way to be saved through the gospel. We thank You for granting us repentance and faith, for drawing us to Christ by Your Spirit. And for making us Your children and placing us in a local church. It really is a great joy to be part of Your people. We thank You for this church and all its members. For the encouragement they are; the friendship they offer; for the care and love and support they give; and the concern they have for us and our perseverance in the faith. We thank You for the way they serve us; model Christ to us; and the example they set for us. Lord, help us to love each other deeply, remembering the depth of Christ’s love for them.

Gracious God, There is really so much we can give You thanks for. The countless blessings You flood our lives with. We have been given so much. We are not in want with You as our Shepherd. We can say that boundary lines have fallen for us in pleasant places. But we are conscious that we don’t want seeds of discontent to rise up within us. That the danger of not being satisfied with what we have is real. That the world exerts pressure on us to want more and more and more. Help us then to learn the secret of being content in any and every situation; whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. That if we have Christ, we have all we need.

And yet You desire to shower us with more grace by giving us the hope of great blessing to come. A delightful inheritance. Entry into the new heavens and new earth. Eternity in the place the One who loves us and who gave Himself for us is preparing for us right now. That because of Jesus’ resurrection, because You did not abandon Him to the grave nor let His body see decay, our future resurrection is guaranteed, and one day we will experience a deeper joy than we have ever known.

Help us, by Your Spirit, to keep our eyes always upon You. That when hard times come, we don’t lose our joy; that neither difficulty nor disappointment would snatch it away; and that knowing You are with us would be a constant source of delight.

Amen.

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