Praying with Paul

Romans 2:1-7

Dear Father, holy and righteous judge,

Help me not to condemn myself by passing judgment on someone else when I may be doing the same or similar things. How could I escape your judgment and do this?

Help me not to presume on the riches of your kindness and forbearance and patience. Help me understand that your kindness is meant to lead me to repentance. Take away the hardness and impenitence that may be in my heart. Give me a heart of flesh, not stone.

Change my...

 

Romans 1:32

Dear Father, righteous judge,

Who could argue against your righteous judgment? Who would claim that those who refuse to see truth should not be left in their blindness? Though they know that those who pervert truth deserve to die, they not only continue to practice perversion, they also glorify it!

Holy God, your judgment is just! Have mercy on these derelict people to chasten them with judgments that will bring them to repentance. And dear Father, save all of your...

 

Romans 1:26-31

Dear Father, judge of all,

How awful is your judgment. When men do not acknowledge you as God and do not live by your teachings, you give them up to base minds and improper conduct. Then they become filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malignity, they gossip, slander, and hate you. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless...

 

Romans 1:24-25

Dear Father, to whom all honor and glory is due,

How sad that some would choose to dishonor themselves rather than to honor you. When they do so, you give them up to their own dishonorable passions. Women exchange natural relationships for unnatural. The men likewise give up natural relations with women and are consumed with lust for each other. Men commit shameless acts with other men and receive in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Today, Lord, it...

 

Romans 1:18-23

Dear Father, to whom all honor and glory is due,

How sorry I am that men do not honor you as their God and King! It is to their loss and to their hurt, but it insults you! They wickedly suppress the truth. Through creation, you have shown them plainly what can be known about you, so they are without excuse. Although they know of you, the true God, they do not honor you as God or give thanks to you as God. Their thinking is futile and their senseless minds are darkened...

 

Romans 1:16-17

Dear Father,

Help us never to be ashamed of the Good News but to have great pride in it, since it is your power of salvation for everyone, the Jew first, then the non-Jew.

In it you revealed your righteousness from one degree of faith to another. As your prophet Habakkuk declared, "The just shall live by faith."

Grant me, Father, to be filled with faith and to show it in my faithfulness. In fact, I am able to live every day by my trust in you! I am sustained by my...

 

Romans 1:8-15

Dear Father,

Thank you in Jesus Christ for every devoted Christian whose faith is proclaimed abroad. I thank you that they are a strength to me. Help me be a strength to them. May our mutual sharing of faith be a rich spiritual blessing from you.

Help all of us to realize that we are under obligation to explain our faith to the learned and unlearned, the cultured and the backward, the wise and the foolish, everyone!

Fill us to overflowing with an eagerness to proclaim...

 

Romans 1:1-4

Dear Father, who commissioned the Good News to all nations,

Thank you that through Christ we have received grace and been commissioned to spread the Good News everywhere to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including our own.

Thank you that we here in our country are also called to belong to Jesus Christ. May the grace and peace that comes from you, our Father, and from Jesus be showered upon all of us who claim your...

 

Romans 1:1-4

Dear Father, who commissioned the Good News to earth,

Thank you for the Good News for planet Earth which you promised through your prophets in the Holy Scriptures.

We love you for giving us this Good News about your Son, who, though he was descended from King David according to the flesh, was designated your Son, the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead.

We exult in thanksgiving for Jesus Christ, holder of all...

 

Philemon 1-16

Dear Father, bestower of freedom,

Thank you for the love and the faith which you have put in your people. Please help them share this with each other and with the world. Let this promote the knowledge of all the good that is ours in Christ Jesus. Put such joy in our hearts and such gladness on our faces that people will want to know what makes us happy.

Help each of us to render such help and comfort, expressing our love, that the hearts of all your holy people will be...