Father, twice in a single sentence You spoke, through the prophet Isaiah, of Yourself as “the God of truth,” and our Savior Jesus spoke of Himself as the way the Truth and the life and prayed that we might be sanctified through the truth, adding that Your Word is truth. Give us a passion for truth, we pray. Teach us, as the Apostle Paul instructed, to test all things, hold fast what is good. Rid us of the plague of relativism, which refuses to recognize that truth and falsehood are incompatible, … [Read more...]

Lord, You tell us that the earth is Yours because You made it, and from that we learn that producing something is the basis of ownership. You also tell us to respect others’ property—not only that we don’t steal it, but also that we don’t harm it, but instead act to preserve it securely as their own. You demonstrate justice to us in that You render to everyone his due. But today there are many who pervert the meaning of justice so as to violate property rather than preserve it. Not to each his … [Read more...]

O LORD our God, you have made every man, woman, and child an image of Yourself, to be honored and respected for that reason all by itself. Yet millennium after millennium, century after century, decade after decade, year after year, month after month, week after week, day after day, we have, as a human race, shown contempt for Your image by showing contempt for our fellow man, even to the point of killing with no just cause. We are angry, and our anger leads to violence and killing. We are … [Read more...]

Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. Father in Heaven, You are the model Father. You show us what it truly means to love our children. While those who don’t know you worry about what they will eat or what they will wear or where they live, You feed the birds of the air and clothe the flowers of the field, and You assure us that if You do those things, You will take care of us, too, so that we will seek first Your Kingdom and … [Read more...]

Oh Father, You are of purer eyes than to look upon evil, and You made us, male and female, to express love and fruitfulness through our sexuality. But we, Your creatures, have sullied sex, as we’ve sullied everything else, by misusing it, often by idolizing it. Teach us, like Your servant Job, to make a covenant with our eyes, not to look lustfully on others, but rather to see them as Your precious image bearers, many of them already Your children, many more yet to become Your children, and all … [Read more...]

“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!” Heavenly Father, Your creation, the work of Your hands, is a glorious revelation of Your wisdom, power, and goodness. Yet many people fail to recognize that. They are blind to how the heavens declare Your glory, and the sky Your handiwork. I see this especially in the ease with which so many people … [Read more...]

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. O Lord, why did You forbid us to … [Read more...]

Father, it’s so easy in this life to let other things take Your place in or thinking. Wealth, friendships, freedom, our own pride—these and many other things we tend to prioritize above You. Free us from these, we pray, and free the many people who have turned the world itself into their god—“atheist” secularists for whom the material world is the ultimate reality, pantheist spiritualists for whom the cosmos is god, primitive animists who substitute many gods for you. Those attitudes are … [Read more...]