Month: June 2024

Teach Us To Pray

State of Heart

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

Our words reflect the state of our hearts. Let’s fill our hearts with love, kindness, and grace, so that our words can bring life, healing, and hope to those around us.

Just like a tree is known by its fruits, our words reveal the true state of our inner world. If we find ourselves constantly speaking negatively or harshly, it’s a sign that something needs to change, not in our vocabulary but in our heart. The good news is that we don’t have to do this work alone.  When we invite the Holy Spirit to fill us, He starts reshaping our inner world. As we surrender to this transforming presence, He helps replace those negative speech patterns with words of gratitude and grace.

Lord, I invite you to tend to the garden of my heart and ask you to uproot any bitterness or negativity and plant seeds of love and joy in their place.  Make me cooperate with your transforming work so my words will start to sound like yours, full of life, healing and hope. Amen. 

Teach Us To Pray

Amen, So Be It

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

Beautiful things happen when we entrust ourselves to our spiritual mother Mary. There is truly no way to know the heart of Jesus without seeing through his mothers eyes and her heart. Jesus gave us to her at the foot of the cross as he breathed his last breath signifying its importance. I’ve grown to know and love this model of humility and holy perfection. She has helped soften my heart, teaching me to love. But recently something has changed.  After consecrating myself to Mary, I’m experiencing God’s grace to be glorified through me. Each of us has the honor of being little tabernacles of the Lord. Like Mary, we too can carry Him within ourselves and share His love, hope, and joy with all those around us.  

Let love be sincere, hate what is evil, hold onto what is good;  love one another with mutual affection; anticipate one another in showing honor. Romans 12:9-10

Who do you reflect? Like Mary, we can carry Him within.

Dearly beloved Mother, grant, if it is possible, that I may have no other spirit but yours to know Jesus and his divine will; that I may have no other soul but yours to praise and glorify the Lord; that I may have no other heart but yours to love God with a love as pure and passionate as yours. I do not ask you for visions, revelations, feelings of devotion, or spiritual pleasures. It is your privilege to see God clearly; it’s your privilege to enjoy heavenly bliss; it’s your privilege to triumph gloriously in heaven at the right hand of your Son and to hold absolute sway over angels, men, and demons; it is your privilege to dispose of all the gifts of God, just as you wish . . . The only grace I beg you to obtain for me is that every day and every moment of my life I may say: Amen, so be it, to all that you did while on earth; amen, so be it, to all that you are now doing in heaven; amen, so be it, to all that you are doing in my soul, so that you alone may fully glorify Jesus in me for time and eternity. Amen.  St. Louis de Montfort 

Teach Us To Pray

Given the Power

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

When we realize the power we have to build up another with our words and deeds, life can become far more exciting as we put this ability into practice. We are given the power to build the kingdom of love, let us always remember. 

The glory and power are yours, Lord forever! I can help build your Kingdom through my praise. Building up others, reminding them who we are in you and the things we can do through you. Hope and healing reigns when we remember your promises. We need to hear your word through scripture and through the voice of others to discern your holy will. 

Where there is no love, put love and you will find love. St John of the Cross.

Teach Us To Pray

Part of God’s Story

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

We need to remember we are part of God’s story. As human beings, we cannot walk through life on our own. We need rescue, healing, and forgiveness. In short, we need God. We need the good news, the news of the King who has come, making lasting change possible.

This alone is our personal hope and the basis of our personal ministry to others. 

Lord, please help me to see that my personal story is part of a much larger story that you are crafting and shaping into a beautiful grand narrative—the ultimate narrative. Thank you for inviting me in and including me in your grand story. Would you help me to keep your story front and center as I go about my life, and would you use me in any way you wish to bring glory to your name? In the name of my great Savior, Jesus. Amen

Teach Us To Pray

Eternal Perspective

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

Do you live with a sense of Kingdom urgency, with confidence you have a soul to save and live life for the eternity that awaits us? With the tug of the world, we desperately need to keep an eternal perspective like Jesus. 

This perspective was lightning focused on the mission that matters: bringing God’s love to the world, and being a conduit of grace. We live in a noisy world and as a result, we can no longer hear the voice of God in our lives. Through prayer we accept the gifts we have been given by God.  Gifts like Faith. Hope. Love.

Prayer is talking to God and an elevation of our soul, offering homage and asking for God to grow us in holiness for His glory.  The sanctification of the soul is the work of God. Our work is the intention and desire to transform our hearts through prayer and penance.  Developing our awareness to eliminate anything that separates us from the love of God.  When we begin to pray, we cease to sin. When we cease to pray, we begin to sin. Let’s keep an eternal perspective today!

God, give me an eternal perspective. Help my understanding of eternal life become bigger so that the cares of this world become smaller. Amen

Teach Us To Pray

God’s Faithfulness

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

We are assured of God‘s fidelity who will fetch us and bring us to life. This fetching is so that we will love the Lord, our God with all our heart, and without our soul.  This is what gives us life. The word is near to our hearts, so we can do this. But God has set before us each day life and good, death and evil so it is our choice.  Do you need a reminder to lean on the Holy Spirit within you?

What are the things that take your heart away from the Lord? What do you need to do to get rid of them? Take these questions to the Lord and pray today and ask him to help you fight these important battles. 

I have sat before you, life and death, blessing, and curse; therefore, choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and clinging to him;for  that means life to  you and length of days, that you may dwell in the land, which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them” Deuteronomy 30:19-20

Lord God, we give you thanks today and praise. We thank you for your word. You give us your truth and you give us a sign of your heart that you do for us life and good death and destruction. You want us to choose life. This is your will for us that we choose life. And yet we are so fickle. We are so quick to turn away from you, and we are so quick to forget that you love us with the love of a father. We turned to other things and other people and we ultimately end up betraying you. The one who has loved us like no one has ever loved us. So help us God please help us not only be faithful and always turn to you, knowing that we can trust in your goodness and your love, and your mercy. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen

Teach Us To Pray

Satisfaction 

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

Are you feeling restless or with a spirit of dis-ease always wanting more or something different.  Do you need to feel satisfied?  Satisfaction comes as we await the promise of God and the fullness of all that is good in heaven.  If we yearn for the good things in this life, we will lose those which are heavenly and eternal.  We are to use temporal things properly, with gratitude and detachment, but always desire what is eternal. 

Temporal things never fully satisfy. We were not created to enjoy them alone because our blessedness and happiness lie only in God.  

Lord, help me keep my eyes on you and the things that actually matter.  You are the One who has made all things from nothing. Let me seek my satisfaction in You. Amen. 

Teach Us To Pray

True Healing

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

How many times do I let my small soul cover up the image of God within me by living from the narrow spectrum of my fearful desires? Lord have pity on me. Summon the depths of my being and call the great soul within me to rebirth and reconfiguration.

Like Bartimamaeous, the blind man begging to be healed, let me refuse to be silent in my need. Let me come with joy into the presence of the Lord.

Gracious and loving God, grant us humility, that we may know our own blindness. Convict us with perseverance in prayer as we call on your son to convert our hearts. With each dawn, let us see your glory with new eyes and with each evening let us rest in peace. Through Christ, our Lord, Amen 

Teach Us To Pray, Uncategorized

Eternal Life

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

The reward for our self-denial begins in this life and has its culmination in the life to come. The difference between one and the other is that in this life there are also persecutions. In this life we enjoy both the love of Christ and suffering persecutions for his sake. This life is a life of purification of our love, purification of our intentions. By proving our love now, we will enjoy life with Christ for all eternity.

Lord, you know how attached I am to myself, my possessions, and my comforts. Help me to give up what I need to give up—out of love for you and your Gospel, not out of love for myself or what I might get out of it. Help me not to be afraid to deny myself for the sake of drawing nearer to you. Today, I will give up something that keeps me from drawing closer to you. Amen

Teach Us To Pray

Real Motivation

Smitten With Goodness
Season of neediness in prayer

Reward is not given only to those who simply give things up, but rather to those who give things up for the sake of Christ and for love of the Gospel. Sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice—or for that matter, sacrifice for a selfish reason—is worth nothing in God’s eyes. Sacrifice has value only when it is done for the sake of Christ and his Gospel, for love. It is our gift to God. Our intention in self-denial must be to glorify Christ or to witness to the Gospel message. 

Is this the real motivation of my self-denial?

Lord, help me to have a pure intention in my acts of self-denial.