PRAYER FOR TODAY 1ST JANUARY 2024 – A PRAYER FOR YOUR GOALS IN THE NEW YEAR

DAILY PRAYER AND SCRIPTURE FOR TODAY.

Engage these Daily Prayer and Scriptures for today. Take to God all that you desire in prayers, while you watch restfully as he steps into situations to bring out beauty and colour in your live. Today, as you commune with God, know that God has settled all that concerns you, Just believe and pray with faith in your heart. Remain blessed in Jesus name, Amen.

Today’s Prayer is Authored by: Molly Law

Prayer Focus For Today 1st January 2023: A Prayer for Your Goals in the New Year

“Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” – Psalm 139:16

The year is over and done with, and the new year, as it always does, has begun in earnest. Every year, as New Year’s Day draws closer, we all want to imagine that a prosperous and optimistic future awaits us. So much so that we alienate ourselves from all the bad that we experienced during the past year and look forward to a new beginning.

But let us not forget the good we also experienced in the past year and continue to seek the Lord’s guiding presence in the new year. For we know that God has been with us in 2022, just as He has been from the beginning, and will be there until the end. Immanuel, God with us, is a promise that endures.

When we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we received His constant joy and hope in His enduring promise. We can feel His presence through the gospel and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. There are so many in this world who will enter 2023 without hope and without peace that can only come through Christ.

When that hope is not found in Christ, people seek to find a way to fill the void in their hearts with what they envision this new year will do for them. The most popular New Year’s Resolution is to lose weight.

People tell themselves that if they lose ‘x’ number of pounds, then their lives will be better: they will get that promotion, they will go on dates, and they will become the person they were always meant to be.

This is a lie from the world — from the enemy — but the truth the Lord wants us all to know is that you, right now, are the person that God created you to be. Just as you are: not 10 pounds smaller, not “healthier,” not anything that an influencer told you on Instagram.

Many diet books and influencers (some even Christian influencers) send mixed messages: “you’re beautiful the way you are right now,” “healthy is beautiful,” “so do this and lose weight” (subtext: “to change who you are despite what I originally said”).

Please know that you are beautiful, wonderfully made, and exactly who God created you to be. No additions, no caveats, and no subtexts to that message. Full stop. The New Year is a passage of time that does not have to signify a radical change, and it will not fulfill the hope that many place in its inanimate hands.

So, before we focus on our appearances, goals, and vision boards for the New Year, let us remember our true calling to be fishers of men (Mark 1:17) and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19) by loving others as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:29).

PRAYER FOR TODAY.

Let’s Pray:

Dear Lord,
I pray for everyone this New Year. I pray that the hope for a better future will not be placed in an inanimate object that has no conscious thought or care for the ones putting all their hope and faith into it. My God, I pray that they will find you, to place their joy, fear, hope, and faith in you and in you alone. I pray for the lost, the hurt, and the jaded. I pray for the pain and rejection that the world inflicted on them.

Lord, may we gain compassion and understanding from you so that we may shine your love and light in a darkened world as we leave the old behind and embrace the new with you, our Alpha and Omega, our Prince of Peace, Lord of lords, and King of kings. Help us to not only remember the hardships of the past year, but also the wonderful memories. I pray that we not only embrace the good in the New Year but lean on you when hard times eventually come.

Thank you, Prince of Peace, for drawing close to us with your comforting presence, guiding us in this fallen and messy world. We love and trust you with all of our hearts, our Savior and King.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.

This Is the Assurance of Answers to Your Prayers – Matthew 7:7-11

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will YOUR FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN GIVE GOOD THINGS TO THOSE WHO ASK HIM!