August got going yesterday, but I couldn’t get to this until today. Apologies for being a day late. This month I’ll be praying this prayer:
ESV Philippians 1:9–11 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
I have found it helpful to begin the day with solemn intercession for myself, my family, the folks at our church, and others I’m praying for using this prayer. I name the people for whom I’m petitioning, and then I ask the Lord to do these things in Philippians 1:9–11 for them. Then I let the Lord bring people to mind and pray this prayer for them.
The idea is not to quickly read through this prayer and tick the box that it’s done. Rather, we want to have our brains rewired so that when we think about prayer we think the way Paul thought. And then we want to be mindful of what we are asking the Lord to do throughout the day. We don’t pray through this thing and move on. We pray through it and then ask the Lord to bring it to mind as we face temptation, come up against challenges, move from task to task, and have spare moments throughout the day.
“Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation” –Jesus
Nice. I have to admit though when I saw the title of your post – Prayer of the month for August- I was sort of hoping it was something about the heat.