Wednesday, Week 8

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail.
— James 5:16 (BSB)

Those blessings are sweetest that are won with prayer and worn with thanks.
— Thomas Goodwin

Almighty God, who has ordered our lot and appointed the place of our habitation — grant us grace to accept cheerfully and to occupy contentedly the station in life which, in Your providence, You have assigned to us. Help us to realize its sacredness, because it is Your fatherly choice for us, and Your gift to us.

Surely the place You have prepared for us, and in which You have set us — must be the best place for us, the place in which we can best grow as Christians, whose atmosphere is the most healthful for us, whose experiences are suited to the development of our character. It must be the place, too, in which we can do the best service for You. Help us to accept it with confidence, and to live in it without discontent.

Sometimes we are disposed to murmur. We think others are more highly favored, have easier positions, have less care and toil, have more ease and comfort. We imagine that if we could change places with some others we know — that we could live more sweetly and make more of our life.

Forgive us this sin of discontentment with our place in life. You know what is best for us. You know where we can be of the most use to You and to others, where the work lies which You have for us to do.

So we pray earnestly, our Father, for the spirit of cheerful acquiescence in Your plan, and Your way for us. Help us to accept Your guidance and to do the things that come to us day by day from Your hand. Then at the end we can rejoice in the blessing of those who have done Your will, and served our own generation. We ask all through Jesus Christ. Amen.