Thursday, Week 2

Give us each day our daily bread.
— Luke 11:3 (BSB)

Prayer is not monologue, but dialogue; God’s voice is its most essential part. Listening to God’s voice is the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine.
— Andrew Murray

O God, our heavenly Father, we cannot go into the day without Your blessing and help. We are blind, and cannot see where to set our feet, and we need to be led by the hand One who knows all the paths. We put our hands in Yours this morning. Show us the way, for You know its every step.

Tell us what You would have us to do. You have a plan for our day's life. There are things You have set down for each one of us to do. May we find these things, and may we have grace to do them all. Keep us from being so absorbed in our own plans and schemes, that we cannot take Your plan and do Your will. If sometimes it is hard for us to take Your way, if it breaks into our cherished hopes and desires — still help us always to say, "May Your will be done."

We ask You to give us grace to live today as we should live. Life is not easy for us. Our burdens are heavy. There are temptations at each step. Help us to speak only the words that will minister grace to those who hear. Help us to be honest in all our business transactions. Help us to be thoughtful and kind to all we meet. Help us to be a strength to many. Let us be a discourager to none.

Please bless all of our work today. Without your blessing, there can be no true profit. As earth's flowers need Heaven's sun and dew — so our lives need Heaven's grace and love to make them what they should be. Breathe on us now, as we bow here at Your feet, and fill us with Your Spirit as we go forth. Then we shall be blessed, and be ready for a day of love and peace and joy.

We ask all these favors, with the forgiveness of our sins, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.