Three Prayers to Pray at the Start of Something New
Whether a new month, a new school year, or a new opportunity—there are always “what if’s” circling through my mind, chasing my thoughts like school-aged kids on a playground. I play the “what if” game right alongside of the best of them, darting in and out hoping to hide until the scene is safe.
What if they don’t like me? What if I fail? What if it goes horribly wrong?
But, then again—what if it’s amazing? What if it’s better than I can imagine? What if it really does all work out to be OK?
So, here are three prayers ushering my heart into the unknown, as new opportunities present themselves this coming month. Perhaps they are helpful to settle your anxious thoughts as well and draw your eyes upward toward your loving Father.
go before me.
Before embarking on any new adventure, welcomed or otherwise, my first prayer is for God to go before me. One of the most difficult transitions in my life was moving our family from New York after 13 years back to Texas. It doesn’t matter how much peace you have that it is the right decision at the time, the what if’s are endless.
I vividly remember praying this prayer modeled by Moses in Exodus 33:13, “Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you.”
And God answered me then, as he did Moses in verse 14, with “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
From then on, when standing on the precipice of something new, my first prayer is that God would go before me, making a way, and lighting my path. I do not want to venture where He is not already. His presence keeps my heart from fear.
Prayer: God, go before me. Make a way. Lead me in your path and fill me with peace in your presence. Amen.
be my strength.
So many times, as the blank calendar begins to fill, my heart begins to race. How can I possibly keep up this pace for another month? It is clear that the strength which sustains for the journey ahead shall not be my own.
In her book, Candles in the Dark, Amy Carmichael addresses the one afraid of failing.
“It is those who never fear a fall who fall most terribly. ‘Hold thou me up and I shall be safe: not for one moment is our own power enough. Don’t be anxious. If you can say, ‘He enabling me, that is my desire’, then you need not fear. You will not fail.”
Can you say that today? Then we need not fear. Allow these words from Ephesians 3:15-16 to form your prayer for strength.
Prayer: “God, for this reason I bow my knees before you, that according to the riches of your glory you may grant me to be strengthened with power through your Spirit in my inner being.” Amen.
your will be done.
So often I voice my prayers in Jesus’ name, and end with an Amen, never giving a second thought to surrendering my will to His. Yet, it is how Jesus modeled prayer in Matthew 6:9,
“Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”
In his book, Something Beautiful for God: The Classic Account of Mother Teresa’s Journey into Compassion by Malcolm Muggeridge, he quotes Mother Teresa in a letter dated 1968 on prayer. In it she says, “In all this field of our material well-being, individual or collective, I can never find anything to say to God except: Thy will be done.”
My mind goes to James 4:13-15 ESV,
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that…”
Oh, the peace that comes from taking Him at His word and releasing the need to control the outcome.
So, join me in yielding our preconceived motives, our predetermined expectations, and our limited perspectives to the will of our loving Creator.
Prayer: God, may your will be done, Father, and may I find my rest in knowing it is all from you. Amen.
