Everyday Prayers

A Prayer about a Delightfully Huge Christmas 

See, I will create new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.
I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.
(Isa. 65:17–19 NIV)

Heavenly Father, the long line at Costco gave me more than a chance to whine about the wait. Casual conversation with fellow shoppers once again highlighted the multiple ways the story of Christmas is told and experienced. 

To start with, Bing Crosby was crooning, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” but on top of that I kept hearing this shopping cart refrain: “We can’t afford much Christmas this year” and “We’re downsizing Christmas this year.” I found myself grateful for the way you tell the story. 

Father, we’re not the ones who “do” Christmas; you are, and there’s really nothing merely merry or little about the day. The size of our Christmas has absolutely nothing to do with how much discretionary money we have to spend on bigger and better gifts. How I praise you that every Christmas is huge, delightfully huge, irrespective of any economy or currency.

Through the gift of Jesus, you’ve promised to create a new heaven and new earth from the stuff of this very broken world— a new creation world in which you will find great delight. We praise you for your generosity and your joy, mighty Father. 

You’ve promised to redeem a people from every race, tribe, tongue, and people group to live in that eternal world of peace and joy— a people in whom you find great delight and over whom you will rejoice forever. We praise you for your generosity and your joy, merciful Father. 

Lord Jesus, I intend to fix my gaze on you today and not on my shopping cart. For you’re the object, author, and perfecter of our faith. It’s because you have come and are coming again that we live with the blessed assurance that all our sins have been wiped away and the glorious hope that all of our tears likewise will one day be wiped away. This is huge, delightfully huge! I pray in your holy and loving name.

Amen.

A Prayer about the Most Holy Paradox 

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion —
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. (Isa. 61:1–3)

Jesus, I’m marinating this morning in the holy paradox of the weakness of your birth and the magnitude of your calling. Who could’ve ever imagined that a baby whose birthing room was a stable would be the means by which God will ultimately stabilize and transform everything awry in the universe?

Who had any way of knowing that the child who nursed from a very young mother’s breast was actually the Ancient of Days— the one who brings the nourishment of salvation, redemption, and restoration to God’s pan national people and much beloved creation? 

Who recognized that the cute, cuddly spirit of this infant was actually the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord by which one day all oppression will be stopped, all chains will be broken, all injustice will give way to justice, mourning will be replaced with gladness, broken hearts will become healed hearts, despairing hearts will become praising hearts, and the disfavored will become the favored of the Lord? Who possibly could’ve seen, known, and believed such a thing? 

We praise you, Lord Jesus, for displaying your splendor most clearly in the gospel of your kingdom and of God’s grace. May your splendor be more fully revealed in us and through us, until the day you return to finish making all things new. May we who have been declared righteous by faith in you live as a people who love your mercy, advocate for your justice, and walk humbly with you, our God. I pray in your most glorious name.

Amen. 

A Prayer about the Perfect Birthing Experience  

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to son ship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir. (Gal. 4:4–7 NIV)  

Dear Jesus, like others, I often sentimentalize the circumstances of your birth, judging Jerusalem for missing the moment, criticizing innkeepers for gross in- hospitality, and pitying Joseph and Mary for the birthing room they had to endure. Yet everything happened just as you, our Father, and the Holy Spirit planned. “Doing all things well” didn’t just start happening after your resurrection.

“When the time had fully come” you came, not a day early and not a day late. As humbling as it was to be born under the ceiling of a stable, being born under the weight of the law was a far greater burden. Yet that’s exactly why you came into the world— to be born under God’s law to redeem us— to redeem me from my sin and my rebellion, to rescue me from my unwillingness and inability to love God as he deserves. There’s no way in the world I could’ve ever fulfilled the demands of God’s righteous, perfect, and holy law. Only you could and only you did. I worship, praise, and adore you, Lord Jesus. 

Because you lived in my place and died in my place, I’m no longer a slave but a son of the living and loving God, with the full rights thereof. Abba, Father has robed this prodigal with your righteousness and has sent his Spirit to live in my heart. My future looks amazing, as I will co inherit the new heaven and new earth with you! Oh my . . . what can I say but “Hallelujah, what a Savior! Hallelujah, what a salvation!” 

I will not judge innkeepers, but I rejoice in the God of my salvation. I pray in your matchless name.

Amen. 

A Prayer about Christmas Memories  

He [God] has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.
(Luke 1:51–55 NIV)

Heavenly Father, as the Holy Spirit prayed this magnificent prayer through a stunned Mary, little could she have imagined what was ahead. Her birth pains in nine months would be greatly surpassed by her heart pains thirty-three years later at the foot of her son’s cross. 

But there’s one thing she did understand— at least one thing she took to heart from her years of growing up in a home of faith. She was taught that you are a God who remembers to be merciful. You have proved this beyond all doubt. 

Father, I worship and adore you this morning for your memory and for your mercy. I’ve got a lot of great Christmas memories, but I am most thankful that Christmas is a celebration of what you did not forget and what you will never forget. With the gift of Jesus, you remembered all the promises you made to Abraham and to his descendants, which includes me. I’m humbled and overwhelmed. 

You promised Abraham you would take him to a land of your choosing, make of him a great nation, and through that nation ultimately bless all the families on the face of the earth (Gen. 12–17). No one could fulfill these promises but you. 

Like Mary, Abraham could not have begun to imagine how all of this would play out. But the promises you made to Abraham and the prayer prayed through Mary all find their fulfillment in your Son, Jesus. I praise you for your memory and your mercy, Father. 

Indeed, Jesus, you are the fulfillment of all the covenant promises God has made. Because of your faithfulness, from the cradle to the cross, we live in the embrace of the Father of mercies, whose mercies are new every morning. Great is his faithfulness! Because of you, Jesus, the only sign of amnesia in our Father is his forgetting to remember our sins against us, forever! What peace, what joy, what hope this brings me today. 

I pray with the faith of Abraham and the humility of Mary, in your gracious and loving name.

Amen. 

A Prayer about Jesus, Our Brother and Prophet  

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers— it is to him you shall listen — just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.” And the Lord said to me, “They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” (Deut. 18:15–18)

Dear Jesus, of all the incredible promises made about your birth, I often overlook one of the first and most wonderful ones given. You are the greater Moses— our brother and prophet. What a joy it is to know that you rule the world with grace and truth, both of which you are full of (John 1:14). 

Throughout the history of redemption, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets, at many times and in various ways. But finally and fully, he spoke to us through you, his beloved Son— Creator and heir of all things (Heb. 1:1–3). You are the final Word, Jesus, the living Word, the loving Word, the incarnate Word! We worship and adore you. 

Oh, the freedom and joy I have in knowing you’ve spoken and have not stuttered, Lord Jesus. Everything I need to know about God, about the world, about me, about the past, the present, and the future — about all things— I find in you. For all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in you and revealed by you (Col. 1:3). You continually set me free from nonsense and no sense, from illusions and delusions, from all guessing and second guessing. 

Oh, the gladness of this Advent season that reminds me that I don’t cower at the foot of Mount Sinai to hear you teach. No! I am a part of the joyful assembly that listens to you preach the gospel to my heart from Mount Zion (Heb. 12:18–25)! Therefore, I will listen. I will not refuse you, for you speak only words of grace and truth, words of comfort and joy, and words of peace and new creation. I pray in your glorious name.

Amen. 

A Prayer about Advent Tenderness  

Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised,
and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. (Isa. 53:1–4 NIV)

Gracious Jesus, before now I’ve never thought of the manger as the very place the Father “planted” you, the “tender shoot” of Isaiah’s vision. But truly, you are the root that broke through the dry ground of a fallen universe. Who could have imagined that the humble estate of a stable would become such a garden of grace and glory? Who could have dreamed that the mighty arm of the Lord would be revealed most powerfully in the weakness of your birth? 

Jesus, I praise you for the humility and tenderness of your incarnation. You who created the very category of beauty— you who are quintessential beauty— became the one with “no beauty,” for us. Though I don’t fully understand all that entailed, one glance beyond your cradle to your cross brings this hard prophecy to life. 

You literally became everything ugly and vile about my sin. You became sin for me that in you I might be clothed and become the very righteousness of God. You who shared the eternal delight of the Godhead and the adoration and esteem of angels became the despised and rejected one for us— for me. 

You who are the fountain of pleasures, whose laughter fills heaven, whose joy is our strength, became the man of sorrows for us— for me. And though you didn’t remain a tender shoot, you have retained all tenderness. Lord Jesus, no one is familiar with suffering like you. In taking up your cross, you took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. What a wonderful, merciful, tender Savior you are! 

If I can make progress in only one thing this Advent season, Lord Jesus, may it be to have a much greater esteem for you. Intensify my love for you, deepen my awe of your manger and your cross, and make me much more the tender man that the gospel is calling me to become. I pray in your holy and gracious name.

Amen. 

A Prayer about Christmas Wisdom  

When they [the Magi] saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
(Matt. 2:10–11)

Dear Jesus, whether they were kings, magicians, or astrologers and whether there were two, three, or seventeen of them, it makes no difference. The Magi were wise men, and they show us the way of true wisdom because they lead us to the Person of true wisdom. Jesus, you have become wisdom from God for us— “our righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). That’s why we boast only in you and not in ourselves or our so-called wisdom. 

In fact, you’re the real seeker in the story of the Magi. Promises of your coming, an irrepressible calling, a providential star, a Spirit generated joy— how we praise you for drawing men and women to yourself from every period of history, every family of humanity, and every segment of society. Come Herod or high water, those you’ve come to save will come to you, Jesus. 

My prayer for this Advent season is quite simple: Jesus, please reveal more and more of your glory and grace to my heart. I want to bow quicker, lower, and with more joy than ever before you, my majestic and merciful King. Open the eyes of my heart a bit wider to behold the great hope to which you’ve called us in the gospel. Deepen my adoration of you, Jesus, and loosen my grip on my so-called treasures. What do I have that you have not given me? I pray in your most wise and worthy name.

Amen. 

A Prayer about the Quiet Certainty of Jesus’ Birth  

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. (Luke 2:1–7 NIV)  

Jesus, it’s the beloved day we call Christmas Eve, the date we’ve set aside to remember and reflect upon your nativity. Luke took so much care to fix your birthday in the context of real history and a real world, but whether or not you were born anywhere close to December 25 is not important at all. That you were born— that you actually came from eternity into time and space— that’s what’s important, Jesus.

I sing to you today with all the passion and delight I can possibly muster, “Born that man (including me) no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth (including me), born to give them (including me) second birth.” For the certainty of your birth, and therefore my rebirth, I give you great praise. 

But for all the care Luke took to detail the circumstances of your birthday, it’s the quietness of your birth that astounds me. Any other king would’ve come with great fanfare and a royal entourage. But you came into our world in utter stillness and profound humility. “No room in the inn” wasn’t an insult to you. It was your choice, your plan, the way of the gospel.

We marvel, we wonder, we are in awe of you, Jesus. For you didn’t consider your equality with God something to be selfishly hoarded and held on to. Rather, you made yourself “nothing,” taking the very nature of a human servant— the “Servant of the Lord” of Isaiah’s vision and songs— and in your humility, you died our death on the cross. 

“Mild he lays his glory by . . . Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see . . . Hail, the incarnate Deity, pleased, as man, with men to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel! . . . Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!” 

I so look forward to the day, Jesus, when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that you are Lord, to the glory of God the Father. It’s going to be a loud and large day. But this Christmas Eve I say to myself, “Be still, my soul . . . behold calm glory, savor mild mercy, worship your newborn King with quiet certainty.” I pray in Jesus’ great and gracious name.

Amen. 

A Prayer about Jesus  

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:11)  

Dear Jesus, a most glorious and praise-filled “Happy birthday!” to you. Though you’ve existed forever in rich, joyful, pleasure filled relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, today we celebrate your coming to us and for us. 

I join brothers and sisters throughout the world and from all ages in celebrating that day on this day. Angels “harked,” shepherds ran, and Mary pondered the very good news that fills my heart this early morning. 

I praise you for being born in Bethlehem, the “house of bread.” I was a famished man, binge eating at many empty buffets, spending my money “for that which is not bread” (Isa. 55:2). But you came as the Bread of Life, and you’ve brought the feast of the gospel to my soul. Now I’m a truly satisfied man. 

Yes, I praise you for entering our world in the town of David, Israel’s beloved shepherd king. For what King David could never be, you’ve become for us— the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep and is now caring for us with relentless tenderness and persistent kindness. 

You’re the King of Kings, reigning over and working in all things, for your glory and our good. You’re the ruler of all the kings of the earth, setting them up and sitting them down at your sovereign discretion. No other kingdom but yours is everlasting. Knowing these things to be true, I have a peace that passes all understanding. 

I praise you, Jesus, that you are the long-time promised and much longed for Chris — the Messiah. We’re to look for no other, for in you every promise of God finds its fulfillment, its unequivocal “Yes!”

I praise you, Jesus, that you are the Lord— the Lord of all lords, very God of very God. Oh, for that magnificent day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that you are indeed Lord, to the glory of God the Father! Happy birthday, in- deed, Lord Jesus. You are so easy to love and so worthy to be adored. I pray in your matchless and merciful name.

Amen. 

A Prayer about the Day after Christmas  

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. (Luke 2:20)  

Heavenly Father, life just on the other side of Christmas day feels quite different to different people. For some of us, this was the “greatest” Christmas ever in terms of healthy, caring relationships; incredible “eats”; thoughtful gifts, both given and received; and above all, fresh gratitude for the indescribable gift of your Son, Jesus. 

For others of us, it was a really difficult day of palpable tensions, dashed hopes, brokenness abounding. For still others, it was the first Christmas with an empty chair where a loved one used to sit, or a day spent all by ourselves in excruciating loneliness. 

Father, my prayer today is for all of us, no matter what yesterday was like. For even our best days are in need of the gospel, and none of our worst days are beyond the reach of the gospel. 

When the shepherds left Jesus’ manger, they were still shepherds. They still couldn’t worship at the temple; they still couldn’t give testimony in a court of law; they still were stereotyped as thieves by many in their community. And we shouldn’t romanticize what Joseph and Mary did the day after Jesus was born, as though all of a sudden a five-star inn in Bethlehem did open up, as though Mary’s body would have been spared all the normal chaos and pain of birthing and after birth, and as though angels would’ve started showing up as round the clock nurses.

Father, thank you that we’re Christians, not Gnostics. We don’t have to pretend about anything. Christmas isn’t a season in which we’re supposed to be transported into a super spirituality, rising above reality. The gospel isn’t about denial but is about learning to delight in you, no matter what is going on. We praise you that Jesus came into a real world where everything is broken, but he did come to make all things new, starting with us. 

Please give each of us the special and the common grace you gave the shepherds. Let us hear and let us see more of Jesus, even if we remain “shepherds” the rest of our lives. Enable us to glorify and praise you, Father, for you are not a man, that you would lie about anything. Everything you have told us in your Word will come to pass. This is good news for shepherds and kings alike. I pray in Jesus’ faithful name.

Amen.