I was reading through a book on prayer, and I came across this ancient prayer, which I later found out is an excerpt from a prayer called St. Patrick’s Breastplate. I love the cadence and beauty of the spoken words of this prayer.

 St. Patrick’s Breastplate

Christ as a light

Illumine and guide me.

Christ as a shield O’ershadow me.

Christ under me;

Christ over me;

Christ beside me

On my left and my right.

This day be within and without me.

Lowly and meek yet All-powerful.

Be in the heart of each to whom I speak;

In the mouth of each who speaks unto me.

This day be within and without me,

Lowly and meek yet All-powerful.

Christ as a light;

Christ as a shield;

Christ beside me

On my left and my right.

Amen.

This is such a beautiful, simple prayer to start off your morning prayer time, yet so comprehensive. The prayer begins by reminding us that Jesus is our light for the journey of life that we are on (John 1:4-5), and that each morning we can pray for Him to guide us through our day, to help us stay on His path and not wander off of it.

The next verse reminds us that Christ is our shield, our protection, as Psalm 3:3 tells us. And we need only read through Ephesians 6:10-20 to see the importance of having our shield of faith securely in place for the day. It is only with this shield that we can quench all the fiery darts of our enemy.

The next four verses are so lovely. They remind us that Christ has us completely enveloped with His love and presence. This evokes Psalm 139: 7-12 for me. How completely reassuring to realize that Christ has us hemmed in! Sometimes the words hemmed in have a bad connotation, but not in this instance. We can be assured that Jesus is with us everywhere, always. He’ll be with us in that presentation for work, at home with the children, as we travel, when we have that difficult conversation.

We are then reminded to pray for ourselves and those we meet throughout the day as James 5:16 says, to remember that life is not just “all about us.” Christ wants us to shift our focus onto the people in our circle of influence.

Finally, this prayer points us to Jesus’ character and attributes. Though he was born to a lowly family, He is the All-powerful One as seen in Ephesians 3:20, which means that nothing we face is beyond Jesus. He can handle it all and, consequently, so can we. Actually, His word says we can do above all that we think possible with Him by our sides.

I love praying some of the ancient prayers of the faith. They encourage me in my walk and then inspire me to tell God the thoughts and prayers of my own heart.

I hope they do for you too.

Do you have a favorite prayer? Share it below if you’d like.

Pray on!

Lately, I’ve been wondering how I can effect my world for Christ. Sometimes our greatest witness for Christ will not come from our actions but from our attitudes. To do  Take 5! Be!, please click on the link!

Photo by Dan, Daisy

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In my last post, we explored the spiritual discipline of sacred reading. Today I’d like to show you an example of what this looks like from my journal entries. I’m certainly not an expert on this, but sometimes it helps to see what a discipline looks like for someone else when you’re trying to learn it yourself. On this particular day, I read from Colossians 4:5-8. I was following along with my church as we were doing a study on the book of Colossians. So, using the four steps of sacred reading 1) Read, 2) Reflect, 3) Respond and 4) Rest, this is what my entry looked like that for that day.

1) Read. The part of scripture that jumped out to me was “Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time,” and “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt that you may know how to answer each one.”

2) Reflect. The answer to the question, Where do I see myself in this passage? was that I felt like God was talking about the importance of time and making the most of the opportunities He gives us. Also, the thought that God wants us to spend some time evaluating our speech–about the words that come out of our mouths on a daily basis–seemed to jump out to me too.

3) Respond. In this third step of sacred reading, I had to pray about how God wanted me to personally respond to the scripture. In this case, I felt like God was telling me to get braver about sharing my faith in those opportunities that He gives me–not to force it, but to watch for the opportunities the Holy Spirit opens up and then be obedient and follow through. I can be shy to share this part of my life with strangers, because of how I might appear. God was convicting me to get past the obsession of worrying that others might think of me as weird if I talked to them about Jesus.

Next, I also felt like God was showing me to pray about my words to others, especially to my husband, Mark. I was being patient with other people, but not so much with him, the most important person in my life. God was telling me to build him up with my words, not tear him down.

4) Rest. During this time, I just sat quietly and reflected on what I had learned. I also wrote a short synopsis on a sticky note so that I didn’t forget that day’s lesson. Then I stuck it right in front of me while I was working in my office. Finally, I  thanked God for His wisdom and prayed for help to do make the changes that I needed to make.

I’ve found the practice of sacred reading to be so valuable in teaching me and continuing to mold me into the person Christ wants me to be.

I hope you do too!

Pray on!

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Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is, Christ. Ephesians 4:15

About a week ago, I was sitting in my college church class when a common question for discussion was brought up: “What is the best way to reach others for Christ?”

Some students began to say that they had always been taught to show grace to others, and not necessarily approach them with the gospel, but let them come to Christ through watching our actions. Other students didn’t agree with this method, but instead believed in being more evangelistic and approaching others with the gospel in a more straightforward, confrontational manner.

After several minutes of discussion and debate, a common ground was reached and a realization was brought to light. If it’s all about grace, then eventually, no one will know the truth or the gospel; they’ll just think you were a good person for showing grace and kindness. However, if all we care about is truth, many people may feel as though being a Christian is all about rules and knowledge, and not about an action of showing love to others.

The real answer to the question is that it takes a balance of both grace and truth. This really hit me hard, because I tend to have a habit of caring more about rules then helping people. However, when I talk to someone who doesn’t know about Christ, I sometimes allow fear to rule my life and give an excuse that because I care too much about rules, I need to be careful and only show others grace. Yet, if I only show grace, then how are they supposed to ever know why I’m living the way I live and come to personally know the Lord of my life?

I need to balance both, focusing both on speaking the truth, and speaking it in love.

What side do you usually fall on? Do you tend to let your life speak for itself, or do you speak up and tell others about Christ? Or maybe you’ve found a good balance between the two? I’d love to hear your story!

Brittany

Brittany Jean is a nineteen-year-old college student living in the Midwest with her parents and younger brother. She is currently majoring in pre-law and is planning on using that degree for ministry.