Day 7

Tuesday, March 11th

Guided Prayer

Well here we are. 

I am so happy you decided to take part in this Lent journey and that you took that brave step and scanned the code so we could do these Guided Prayers together. Since this is the first one, I want to take a minute and tell you what you can expect from these few minutes of prayer.

Maybe this whole concept of guided prayers is new to you and I have to confess, it’s new to me too! But I felt God impress upon me to include these prayers in this Lent journey so that we could put into practice taking Jesus up on his invitation: 

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 

Music will play in the background as a way to help you tune out the noise of life. Each of these guided prayers will last just a few minutes and I recommend doing them at a time when you can really focus, sit comfortably, close your eyes, talk to God and also listen for what He wants to speak into your heart. 

Pause it as often as you need, in order for you to feel as though you’re moving at your preferred pace through the prayer.

We will start the same way each time we pray. The words are taken from a story that Jesus tells in Luke chapter 18 about two men who went to the temple to pray:

One was a Pharisee, a member of the religious elite of that time, the other man was a Tax Collector, who would have been mistrusted and despised. The Pharisee prayed like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like that tax collector over there. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

And then Jesus says, “I tell you that this man, rather than the other,

went home justified before God.” 

I often start my own prayers the way the Tax Collector did, to remind myself that I am only human and that God is God.

So each time we pray together, we will start by saying:

“God have mercy on me, a sinner.”