A Prayer for Lent

For the first day of Lent, I wanted to share with you a portion of a prayer from one of my favorite writing Pastors, Rev. Scotty Smith. Dear Lord Jesus...Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. For the next forty days we’ll have the privilege of surveying your all-sufficient cross and acknowledging our present need, as we worship our way towards Easter Sunday — Resurrection Day, the foundation of our hope and the fountain of eternal joy.

For your glory and our growth, we ask you to inundate us with fresh grace in the coming weeks. We don’t want an ordinary Lenten season, Lord Jesus. Saturate it with the gospel. It’s all about you, Jesus. It is all about you, what you’ve done for us, not what we’ll promise to do for you.

Over these next forty days intensify our hunger, our assurance, and our longing for the day of your return—the Day of consummate joy—the wedding feast of the Lamb. Fill our hearts with your beauty and bounty, that we might freely confess and gladly repent of the ways we contradict the gospel — with our thoughts, words and deeds. So very Amen we pray, in your holy and loving name.

--Rev. Scotty Smith

Prayer Requests: Friends, as we begin the season, we're here for you for all the ways you'll celebrate, whether by fasting and abstaining or renewing and recalibrating. With that in mind, let's start out right. If anyone has prayer requests, let's list them and go to the cross together. As always, if you'd rather say "Unspoken" we promise to lift your name in prayer. From all of us at PrayFit, be blessed this first day of the greatest season God ever gave man to enjoy.

A Prayer About The Ultimate Romance

Hey everyone, for my birthday yesterday, Loretta got me what I'd mentioned to her a few weeks ago -- a new daily prayer devotional by Reverend Scotty Smith called Everyday Prayers. And appropriately, being Valentine's Day, Pastor Scotty writes the perfect prayer for the occasion. I wanted to share it with you. A Prayer About the Ultimate Romance

"I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me." --Song of Solomon 7:10

Dear Lord Jesus, it’s the weekend in our culture in which red hearts, overpriced cards, dark chocolates and cut flowers abound — Valentine’s Day is upon us. For some, it’s a day of incredible kindness, sweetness and gratitude. For others, it’s a day in which brokenness, loneliness and emptiness are magnified. For all of us, it should be a day in which are deepest longings for intimacy and connection find their way home to you, Jesus, the consummate lover.

I praise you for how generous you’ve been to me, in giving me rich tastes, tangible expressions, and a sensate celebration of genuine love in my marriage. There’ve been times when I’ve wondered how heaven itself could hold more joy than what I’ve known with my spouse…

But I equally praise you for showing me, time and time again, that no one human being (or any number of them)… no human romance story… no torrid love affair can possibly fill the vacuum in my soul that’s uniquely Jesus-shaped. Even the best marriage is two broken people, two redeemed sinners who will ultimately not be enough for the other.

Grant me, no, grace me with a deeper and richer experience of belonging to you, Jesus. You’re the ultimate Spouse. I know this, but I want to know it. One moment I believe you truly desire me, and in the next I’m filled with disconcerting unbelief. It’s in those times when I’m not alive to your pursuit of me, love for me and delight in me that I place unrealistic demands on other relationships. Instead of a steward, I become a user of others. Instead of a servant, I take up a scorecard to measure them by my expectations. Forgive me and free me from all such nonsense.

Let me love as you love me, until the day my betrothal becomes the day of great banqueting — the Day I long for more than any other… the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. So very Amen, I pray, in your tender and tenacious name.

--Scotty Smith

Scotty Smith is the Pastor for Preaching, Teaching and Worship at Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Told you he was good. Thanks for reading. And blessings to everyone on Valentine's Day. Scheduling note: the PrayFit Daily will resume on TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18. Are you subscribed? If not, click here.