Heavenly Father, I praise You for the training You have given me about praying Your word. I praise You for rearing me in wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and discernment with Your word. I praise You for allowing me to have grandparents and parents who taught me to read, comprehend, and learn to enjoy time in Your word. Help me today to take captive every thought, to bridle my tongue and make it work for me and You, and to take command of my day so I can shake the evil from it and give praise and thanksgiving all day.
I know that You began a good work in me and that You continue to hone my wisdom and faith so that I may continue towards perfection until I see You in heaven. I continue to follow in the tradition of Paul and seek that my love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all discernment, being able to approve of things in my life that will keep me pure and blameless until You return or until I pass from this earth. Let me be filled with the fruit of
righteousness, which comes through Jesus Christ, for the glory and praise of God. [Philippians 1:6,9-11]
Holy Spirit, help me reach the point of understanding within who I am that I can be like Paul and say: Accordingly, it is my earnest expectation and my hope that I shall be ashamed in nothing, but that with all boldness as always, so now also, Christ will be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death. For me, to continue living is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor to me. [Philippians 1:20-22] Let me live a life worthy of the salvation that Christ afforded me and to exhaust myself attempting to fulfill His will for my life daily until I am taken home.
I pray and ask that I may be filled with the knowledge of Your will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that I may walk worthy of the You, fully pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of You; strengthened with all might, according to Your glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified me to be a partaker
of the inheritance of the saints in the light. You have delivered me from the power of darkness and conveyed me into the kingdom of the Son of Your love, in whom I have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. You are the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by You all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through You for You. And You are before all things, and in You all things exist. And You are the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things You may have the preeminence. In Your blessed Son Jesus’ name, Amen. (Colossians 1:9-18)