COLUMNS

Classic Prayers

T.M. Moore

July 18, 2024

Great classic prayers can help your prayer life.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought… (Rom. 8:26a ESV)

I have been writing on things that have helped to enrich my prayer life. I hope they have been as useful for you as they have been for me. This newsletter will focus on those times when we come before the Lord to pray and we just don’t know what to say or how to pray.

Sometimes when I start my regular prayer time or when I feel the urge to pray, I just can’t seem to get focused. My thoughts are jumbled and I am not in a proper attitude for prayer. It is in those times that I open my prayer notebook and pray one of the prayers I have recorded from the saints who have gone before me. Over the years as I have read the books written by these dear saints, I have copied the prayers that have deeply impressed me. They are the “wished I had said that” prayers. Some of them go back to the time of Saint Augustine and Saint Patrick, most of them are from the 12^th to the 19^th centuries, and others are from more recent saints.

There are many resources available to find these prayers. “The Valley of Vision” is an excellent collection of Puritan prayers and devotions. I believe all the denominations have published a book of prayers or worship that would have many good prayers.

I have included just two examples that I hope will bless you in your prayer times.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console.
Not so much to be understood, as to understand.
Not so much to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
It is in dying, that we awake to eternal life.

St. Francis of Assisi

O Lord, who hast mercy upon all,
take away from me my sins,
and mercifully kindle in me
the fire of thy Holy Spirit.
Take away from me the heart of stone,
and give me a heart of flesh,
a heart to love and adore Thee,
a heart to delight in Thee,
to follow and enjoy Thee,
for Christ’s sake, Amen.

— Ambrose of Milan, 4th century bishop