Daily Devotion - October 20, 2025

You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Pet. 2:5)

When construction began on a new development in our community, the builder placed a large fence around the property.  He wouldn’t allow anything inside the gate except what would advance the building of those new homes.

In a similar way, God puts a construction fence around our lives and allows nothing to enter except what will develop us more into the likeness of Jesus.

This fence of God’s care is one of the Christian’s greatest comforts. It assures us that nothing enters our lives except that which is for our ultimate good. The fence of God’s care doesn’t signal that everything will be easy or finished all at once, but it does mean that whatever we encounter inside the fence will have a purpose in the plan of the Architect.

So, remember, Christians are not perfect, but under construction. We have been fenced about with God’s love so that we can be built up according to his perfect plan, and nothing enters our lives except what will be used to make us more like Christ in holiness and service to God!

Prayer: Lord, whatever I face today, help me to remember that it would not have come if it did not have a purpose in your design for my life. Help me to respond with the faith that nothing can enter my life that does not help me better to understand and reflect my Savior.

Daily Devotion - October 17, 2025

…Be imitators of God, as beloved children. (Ephesians 5:1)

Before my wife and I really understood the gospel of grace, we would discipline our children the way we heard others discipline their kids. I would say to my son, “Colin, you’re a bad boy because you disobeyed.”

Such words were so common in our upbringing that we didn’t grasp their flaw. We were teaching our children that who they were was based on what they would do– that because they did a bad thing, they were bad. We based their who on their do. That’s not the gospel!

The good news Jesus came to share is that our identity is not determined by our behaviors but by the relationship his grace alone secures. We don’t imitate God to become beloved; we imitate him, as already beloved children.

To reflect this gospel in parenting, I had to learn to say, “Colin, don’t disobey, because you are my son, and I love you!” I wanted him to know in every way possible that our deeds do not determine our identity; our identity motivates our deeds! 

We do not obey God to gain his love, but to offer thanks for the grace that granted it. Grace prompts the gratitude of joyous devotion. 

Today honor the One who loves you, not because of what you do, but because you are his. Love him with the devotion of the child that you are by his grace alone. Such devotion will be your joy, not because it earns anything for you, but because Jesus gave everything for you.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for making me your child through the grace of Jesus Christ alone. Help me so to treasure this identity that my life reverberates with works of thanksgiving that honor you and demonstrate the depth of my affection for you.

Daily Devotion - October 16, 2025

All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. (Psalm 25:10)

In our national parks and forests, trails are designed to maintain the safety of the hikers, bikers, and campers. Similarly, the principles of God’s law establish the safe path for God’s people through all of life. So, taking such a path should not be something we dread but something we desire to experience God’s guidance and safekeeping.

Staying on the path never earns us God’s grace. If God were not already gracious to us, the path would never have been laid. 

The path of God’s law is an expression of God’s constant care. That’s why the psalmist could sing to God: “Oh how I love your law!  It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97). 

Rejecting God’s good and safe path is not a walk into a carefree life, but foolish wandering from his steadfast love and abiding care.

Today, walk in the safe and good path God graciously provides, and you’ll discover more and more of the character and care of God!

Prayer: Heavenly Father, your Word lights the path that enables me to discover the greatest blessings you intend for my life. Please provide the grace I need today to walk this path with confidence in the love and care of the One who laid it. 

Daily Devotion - October 15, 2025

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to keep your righteous rules. (Psalm 119:105-06)

With an ascent that approaches 14,000 feet, Horn Peak is one of my favorite hikes in the Colorado Rockies. But on one sunny day, as our group reached the tree line, clouds rolled over the mountain. The peak was still visible, and I had hiked the trail before, so I wasn’t concerned. But I should have been.

As we climbed back down from the peak, dense fog enveloped us, hiding the trees and rocks we used to navigate our course. Without a familiar path to follow, we lost our way, came to a sheer drop off, retraced our steps up the mountain, and had to descend through increasing fog, then snow, then darkness for a safe path. 

As daylight waned and we prepared to spend a desperately cold night on the mountain without shelter, we wandered across a well-worn trail. God had graciously provided a path in the remaining light for our rescue!

Similarly, when we have been endangered by wandering from God in spiritual darkness, he provides for our rescue. Not only does his grace alone keep us from a fall into hell, but it also marks for us a path of safety and blessing by the law that shines his love on our path through this life.

Prayer: Lord, may your Word be a lamp unto my feet and a light for my path as I seek to follow you in the ways you have graciously designed and revealed for my life.

Daily Devotion - October 14, 2025

“And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him…whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:22-24)

Do you know how to win baseball’s World Series? Decades ago, when the New York Mets were the surprise champions, the team’s young pitchers told the secret: You gotta believe! In almost every championship series since, people take up that same slogan for their favorite team.  

Belief, it seems, is the magic potion to get what you want. Unfortunately, this superstitious notion of “believing” gets transferred to spiritual matters without spiritual priorities. For example, we can begin to think of prayer as a way of persuading God to give us the trinkets and treasures we desire as long as we “believe” enough that we will get them.  

This “genie in the bottle” approach to prayer, misses the words that began Jesus’ teaching: “Have faith in God.” Our belief is in God, not in the urgency of our desires or the degree of our belief. Our faith is in his wisdom, not ours; his plans, not ours; his fatherly care, not our childish understanding. 

Biblical prayer surrenders control to God, believing that He is already ahead of us, sovereignly responding to our prayers better than we can imagine. We offer meager desires to God, believing the One who made the mountains will move heaven and earth to bless those who have faith in his greater grace.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, help me to trust that the One who made the mountains will move heaven and earth to bless me, so that I will pour out my heart’s desires to you in faith.

Daily Devotion - October 13, 2025

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us. (Eph. 1:7-8)

What does it take for a marathon runner to power through the final miles?  Grit … determination … willpower … Oxygen!

To take in adequate oxygen in those final miles, even the fittest runners open their mouths. Of course, they don’t think that by opening their mouths they’re going to manufacture oxygen. No amount of human effort could do that! Instead, the runners open their mouths to take in what is already surrounding them.

In the same way, we shouldn’t read our Bible or pray or worship God with the expectation that we’re going to manufacture God’s grace for us.  His free, unconditional, unlimited grace has already been fully provided by the work of Jesus. 

When we read God’s Word, pray, and worship, we are relishing the grace that’s already been provided for us so that the joy of the Lord would be our strength (Neh. 8:10). 

We are not manufacturing grace by our performance of these Christian disciplines. We are practicing these disciplines because we rejoice in the grace they reveal and are strengthened by the joy they promote.

So, use every means of grace to breathe in deeply the beauty of God’s grace that every verse and every prayer and every true act of worship celebrates!

 Ready, set, breathe! Breathe in the goodness of God by using his Word, worship, and prayer to fill up your heart with celebration of the grace that is his free gift for your forever joy. 

Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for the grace that you lavishly supply through Jesus Christ. Help me this day to use every means of grace you provide to breathe in the goodness of your care so that your joy would be my strength.

Daily Devotion - October 10, 2025

These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deut. 6:6-7)

As parents, we all make mistakes. My wife, Kathy, and I have made our fair share. We can recall times of improper discipline, impatience, and poor judgment that we hope God will erase from our kids’ memories. But even if they remember, we won’t despair.

As Scripture describes the day-in-and-day-out patterns of biblical parenting, we are blessed by the realization that our patterns are more critical than a particular mistake. Momentary errors will not wreck our children’s souls. Otherwise, conscientious parents could become paralyzed, fearing to do anything with the concern that something might ruin our children. 

God’s grace not only pardons our sin, it provides the instruction that fallible parents need to establish home and life patterns that are more influential than any particular error resulting from temporary fatigue or an overwhelming day!

Our gracious Heavenly Father gives us second chances and long patterns to enable us to steer children in his ways! We may take an occasional wrong turn, but the road is long and forgiving. Praise God, and don’t give up on yourself or his map for the long journey of parenting.

Prayer: Father, I know that I make mistakes, but I thank you for always forgiving me in Christ. Please help me to trust your unconditional love and follow your patient plan as I raise children to know you.

Daily Devotion - October 9, 2025

The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights. (Hab. 3:19 NIV)

Driving through Colorado mountains on a vacation, my family discovered how easy it is to mistake an up for a down.  

Winding through an extremely difficult mountain pass where stony peaks arced away from the car at steep angles, it seemed as though the towering rock enveloping us was forcing us downward. 

Yet, despite our visual sensations, the struggling noise of the car engine indicated we were in fact on an incline. Only by looking in the rearview mirror could we compensate for the optical illusion and see that we were really climbing higher.

In a similar way, when faced with God’s discipline or the world’s difficulties, we may feel as though we’re being brought down, but as we look back over the path the Lord has enabled us to tread, we’ll see he was actually taking us to spiritual heights. 

The journey may be steep and hard, but God only works to lead us higher and closer to his heart.

Prayer: Sovereign Lord, you are my strength. Enable me today to walk through the valleys of this life and to the spiritual heights that are closest to your heart. 

Daily Devotion - October 8, 2025

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom. 12:2)

Maybe you’re like me. I was raised in a Christian home, but in my teens, my parents’ marriage was in crisis, and I retreated to my room most nights to escape the tensions and stress.

So, when I went off to college, and even began ministry, I didn’t have good perspectives on marriage or relationships of any kind. I lived in a protective shell, cool and aloof. I limited any expression of love or emotion, protecting myself from pain, while actually wanting love and connection. 

When the Lord first brought, Kathy, my future wife, into my life, I was sure that I could help her grow in spiritual understanding. I now praise God, that he used her to teach me far more of his grace for battered souls like mine. 

Kathy loved me past my aloofness, forgave my pride, and allowed me to grow in tenderness. Had she not expressed grace better than I can explain it, I shudder to think of the father, pastor, or man that I would have become. 

God’s transformation occurs when our minds are renewed by understanding how good, pleasing, and perfect is his will. His Word reveals that will; our relationships also have the power to make it real. Teaching and showing grace to one another breaks the patterns of the world and renews hearts for Jesus. 

Prayer: Heavenly Father, continue to transform my heart and mind by the Word and work of your Holy Spirit, so that I can know your good, pleasing, and perfect will.

Daily Devotion - October 7, 2025

As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:12-13)

Driving through the flat fields of our area, we often have an unobstructed view from one horizon to its opposite. When our children were small, we would encourage them to look one direction out our car windows, and then scan the horizon all the way to other side of the car. Then we would say, “That’s how far God has removed our sins from us.”

 The perspective that keeps us adults from fully appreciating that wideness of God’s mercy is one obstructed by our own sin. We imagine the heavenly expanse blocked by a God looking down on us with arms crossed and frowning face. That’s why the Bible not only tells us about how distant God makes our sin, but how open are his arms to draw us near.  

Our Maker remembers we are creatures of dust, needing his compassion, and he shares it as readily as a compassionate father embracing a child in need!

Prayer: Lord, help me remember your love removes my sins as far as the east is from the west, and you have fatherly compassion for all who confess they need such grace.

Daily Devotion - October 6, 2025

My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights. (Prov. 3:11-12)

A father who delighted in his son was genuinely surprised at an act of foolish rebellion. As was the habit of that family in that era, the disobedience resulted in a trip to the bathroom for a few whacks of mom’s hairbrush to “the seat of education.”

The son’s reaction to the punishment also surprised the father. The child shook with spasms of tears expressing far more pain than the controlled discipline could have inflicted. 

The father said, “Son, why are you so upset? You have never reacted this way before. Did I hurt you more than I intended?”

“No, Dad,” the child replied. “But always before, you left the bathroom door open. This time you shut it and in the mirror on the door I could see the pain in your face as you disciplined me. I did not know how much I hurt you, until I saw your face.”

So also our God takes no delight in our discipline, but because he delights in us, he will act to protect us from the harm of unchecked sin. How much our sin hurts him was revealed at the cross.

Prayer: Father, no child enjoys discipline – including me! Help me to realize and receive your discipline as an act of love intended to turn me from harm and to help me grow to maturity in Christ’s blessings.

Daily Devotion - October 3, 2025

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. . . . For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9-10)

Perhaps the first children’s song we learned was Jesus Loves Me. The song teaches us about Jesus and also about ourselves: “Little ones to him belong; they are weak but he is strong.” We may get too old for the song’s tune, but should not mature beyond its truth.

 Even the Apostle Paul did not outgrow the confession of his weaknesses. If that seems humiliating, then we have not fully grasped the blessings of Jesus’ love. 

Our Savior delights to show himself strong in behalf of those who confess their need of him. When we acknowledge that our sins and our trials are beyond our resources, then we are signaling for our Savior to rescue with his. 

Our grownup tendency is to trust our abilities. Childlike faith that trusts Jesus’ love and power, confesses, “Jesus, I need your help.” Then, the same Jesus that loves the little children responds, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Prayer: Father, thank you for promising sufficient grace. Help me rely on my Savior’s strength more than mine by a willingness to boast of my weaknesses that require his rescue.

Daily Devotion - October 2, 2025

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. (James 4:8)

I have seen the wall where the ink left its stain. A spattered shadow still appears where Martin Luther is said to have thrown his inkwell at the Devil’s appearance. The story is famous for its dramatic features and important because of its representation of spiritual warfare. 

Luther wasn’t running from God or pursuing an evil path when he felt most assaulted by Satan. The spiritual attack came while Luther was translating the New Testament into the language of his people.

After enduring great personal sacrifice and engaging in efforts that would change the face of the Western world, Luther’s faith was severely tested. His experience should teach us we are never immune to spiritual assault — not even when we are immersed in noble spiritual endeavors. 

Thus, we must resist the Devil, not only by doing important things for God, but by drawing near to him. Great men and women of God often receive their greatest spiritual challenge when engaged in their most important spiritual work. The key to our spiritual safety is not the greatness of our endeavor but the nearness of our God. 

Our temptation is to be fulfilled by doing a great work for God, but he first desires a great heart for God. We want the achievement; God wants our heart. 

Prayer: Father, help me to recognize and resist the attacks of the evil one. Let me not substitute the importance of doing work for you with the necessity of drawing near to you. 

Daily Devotion - October 1, 2025

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. (Rom. 4:4-5)

I heard an old tale about a man who died and faced the Angel Gabriel at heaven’s gates. Gabriel told him, “In order to get inside you need 100 points, so tell me all the good things you’ve done.”  

Assured of his qualifications, the man excitedly recounted his accomplishments: He never cheated on his wife, he attended church, he supported missionaries, and he helped the needy. “Fantastic,” Gabriel responded. “You have five points!”

Upon hearing this, the man cried aloud in desperation, “What? At this rate, the only way I’ll get into heaven is by the grace of God!” 

Then Gabriel welcomed him inside. 

The man had discovered that we can’t stand before God because of anything but belief in Him who justifies the ungodly! 

Our faith in the grace provided through Christ is our great and sure hope. To all who confess their need of him, the King of Heaven says, “Come in.”

Prayer: Lord, I look forward to the day I’ll be with you in the joys of heaven. Thank you that my qualification is not by anything I have done, but solely through faith in the grace you have provided! I have no hope of heaven but for Jesus. Please help me live the thanksgiving He deserves.

Daily Devotion - September 30, 2025

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. (Phil. 3:8-9)

When God looks at us, he does not value us based on our talents and accomplishments. Since our best works are tainted by our human imperfections and pride, any thought that God’s love would be based on our deserving will always be countered by God’s infinite holiness. 

For this reason, the Apostle Paul counts as rubbish whatever good works he had once counted to his credit for God’s acceptance. Paul now has faith that God looks at him through the lens of what Jesus perfectly accomplished on the cross – not through the lens of human performance. 

An old example reminds us that when you look at something white through a red lens, it looks red. But, when you look at something red through a red lens, it looks white. 

Similarly, when we try to hold up our works as pure to God, he observes them through the lens of the cross as bloodstained. But when we confess that our sins required the blood of Jesus, God looks at our scarlet stains through the lens of the blood of Christ, and they look as white as the wool of a lamb. 

The example is ancient, but we need the truth every day and eternally. When we trust that Jesus’ blood covers our sins, then we need not count on our rubbish to provide for our redemption. Trust that, though your sins be as scarlet, Christ’s blood will make them white as snow. His grace will cover you. 

Prayer: Lord, thank you for covering my sin with Christ’s blood. May your lens of grace be the source of my hope and the lens through which I learn to see others’ need, too!

Daily Devotion - September 29, 2025

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Cor. 12:9)

Years ago, at my graduation from seminary, God revealed his grace in a way that initially frightened me. As I looked down the line of friends graduating into ministry, I had a shocking realization. Every one of my friends had been through a major life challenge while in seminary. I, too, had suffered deep heartache. 

In that moment, I thought to myself, “Someone has tried to stop us from living for Christ.”

I have continued to witness the opposition of Satan to my friends and to me in every life stage and every place of ministry. His relentless attacks have revealed our weaknesses time and again. 

But they have revealed something else: the strength of God in and beyond our weakness. Those that have humbly sought God’s aid, honor, and forgiveness have been powerfully used to accomplish what no one could have done in his own strength.

God has poured his goodness through our weaknesses to show that the surpassing greatness of his power is all of grace. Through Christ’s mercy rather than our merits marriages have been healed, churches built, leaders restored, and souls saved for heaven forever. 

None of us can take credit for these spiritual transformations. All we can say is, “Praise God.” Our weaknesses have made his power evident to us, if to no one else. The grace we have received makes our certainty of the gospel all the more sure. Our weaknesses prove his strength. 

Prayer: Lord, pour mercy through humility, making the power of your grace more evident by the confession of my weakness that you have overcome – and blessed!

Daily Devotion - September 26, 2025

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom. 5:8)

Our human instinct is to believe we have to become a better person for God to accept us – that we have to achieve a certain level of holiness before we can have a relationship with God. 

Common experience teaches, “Measure up! You have to hit the mark before you get my heart. Achievement before acceptance!” The gospel of Jesus Christ is gloriously and graciously different! 

God shows his love for us in that Jesus sacrificed himself for us before we measured up, hit the mark, or achieved anything – while we were still sinners! Jesus invites us to come to him even though he knows everything about us – the good and the bad.  He knows our sin, and loves us still. 

To come to him, as he desires, we resist the instinct that says, “He won’t accept me until I get good enough.” That would deny how good he is, and would keep us from ever coming. 

Instead, we believe that he really wants us to come to him acknowledging our sin rather that trumpeting our achievements – in meekness confessing we have missed the mark. 

We don’t need to wait until some future day of better resolve. We can run to the rescue that is ours today, as we trust the Savior of sinners to love us before we become saints – to embrace the messed up before we have cleaned up. 

Prayer: God, I can hardly believe that you love and accept me despite my sins. So, help me to believe. I come to you now, confessing that I don’t deserve to come but that Jesus gave himself for me while I was still a sinner. Forgive me and help me live and love as you desire to honor Jesus’ grace for me.

Daily Devotion - September 25, 2025

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. (1 Pet. 3:1-2)

After becoming a Christian, “Heather” had faithfully committed to living for her Lord despite the indifference of her husband, “James.” As a hardened police captain, he wanted nothing to do with her faith and often mocked it. Still, she honored and loved him for more than thirty years.

I once asked her what kept her living sacrificially for her husband when his gruffness and mockery were so painful. She simply said when she became a Christian, she fell in love with Jesus. That love made her want what Jesus wanted for her husband.

Being subject to a spouse as the Bible requires is never mousy meekness that demeans a woman. The Bible’s intends courageous, faithful, wise, and persistent living for heaven’s purposes. Such living refuses to cling to bitterness or selfishness, but yields and wields every gift and resource that God provides the sake of another’s soul. 

Such “yielding and wielding” are living the gospel message with respectful and pure conduct, even when human reasoning and rewards seem far off. 

When thirty years of acting like “Billy goat gruff” did not drive his wife away from her faith or from him, James turned to her God. He had seen the worst of the world in his profession and wanted the realities of another world he had seen in his faithful wife. 

Prayer: Father, please enable me to live a respectful and pure life in front of my spouse and others, so that they can see the changes Jesus has made in me and be drawn to him.

Daily Devotion - September 24, 2025

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom. 5:8)

Our human instinct is to believe we have to become a better person for God to accept us – that we have to achieve a certain level of holiness before we can have a relationship with God. 

Common experience teaches, “Measure up! You have to hit the mark before you get my heart. Achievement before acceptance!” The gospel of Jesus Christ is gloriously and graciously different! 

God shows his love for us in that Jesus sacrificed himself for us before we measured up, hit the mark, or achieved anything – while we were still sinners! Jesus invites us to come to him even though he knows everything about us – the good and the bad.  He knows our sin, and loves us still. 

To come to him, as he desires, we resist the instinct that says, “He won’t accept me until I get good enough.” That would deny how good he is, and would keep us from ever coming. 

Instead, we believe that he really wants us to come to him acknowledging our sin rather that trumpeting our achievements – in meekness confessing we have missed the mark. 

We don’t need to wait until some future day of better resolve. We can run to the rescue that is ours today, as we trust the Savior of sinners to love us before we become saints – to embrace the messed up before we have cleaned up. 

Prayer: God, I can hardly believe that you love and accept me despite my sins. So, help me to believe. I come to you now, confessing that I don’t deserve to come but that Jesus gave himself for me while I was still a sinner. Forgive me and help me live and love as you desire to honor Jesus’ grace for me.

Daily Devotion - September 24, 2025

I cried out to him with my mouth; his praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but God has surely listened and has heard my prayer. (Psalm 66:17-19)

If we want our prayers to be answered, we must be concerned to do God’s will, because God will never contradict his purposes. The psalmist writes, “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” 

God does not answer prayers that undermine what’s best for our souls. If we ask God to make our lives pleasant while pursuing sin, his granting of our request would only damage our souls.

God does not turn a deaf ear to sinners’ prayers, rather he listens with sovereign sensitivity to the priorities and affections behind our requests. He is not punishing our sin by his silence but guiding our hearts to his by depriving us of our own selfishness. 

Out of his fatherly care, God’s Word and Sprit convict our hearts of sin, reveal self-deception, and renew our appreciation for fellowship with him. If we are paying attention to the way God responds to our prayers, we will understand the misery of selfishness, the goodness of God, and the privilege of praying to One who only listens to prayers that will shower his grace upon us.

Prayer: Father, make the desires of my heart you own. Help me not to ask you to bless or ignore my sin, but to lead my heart in your paths by how you respond to my prayers.