Prayer from God to you

On Sunday, December 12, after I preached on John the Baptist’s call to “bear fruits worthy of repentance” and Jesus’ call to “love our neighbors as we love ourselves,” I offered the following pastoral prayer:

Love your neighbor as you love yourself. It begins with loving ourselves. And that begins with letting God love us. And remind us that we are loveable.

So the prayer today is not talking to God, but allowing God to talk to us.

This is from a devotion I gratefully read this week from Steve Garnaas-Holmes, to which I added some of my words. Listen for these words from God spoken to you:

My child,

Thank you for being you.

I created you for someone to be in love with—

and here you are.

I know sometimes you feel brilliant

and sometimes a total failure,

but you are lovely, and sacred,

and the light of my delight burns in you

no matter what.

Beloved, I pray earnestly that you will be

the beautiful soul I created you to be.

You are my face in your world;

you are my hands, and I love working in them;

you are my eyes, and I love looking through them.

I am with you every breath;

I pray you will let my spirit in,

let me fill you and guide you;

let me be in you.

I pray you will trust what you cannot see

and rarely feel: my infinite love for you.

Oh, Beloved, I am so silly in love with you.

I pray in hope and joy and confidence,

in the name and the spirit of Jesus,

who for you and for me is our image of the other.

I love you and the whole world so much, that’s why I sent my son.

That’s the heart of Christmas.

This Christmas, I pray you will open your hearts and let me fill them up with my love.

And I hope that you will keep on talking to me, trusting in me,

And praying to me.

I’m particularly fond of the prayer that my son taught you,

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.