“Father of Lights” is a prayer I composed and prayed daily for months a number of years back. From time to time, I go back to it and use it as a part of my own personal daily litany. Whenever I have shared it here on LifeBrook, readers seem to appreciate it. As readership is consistently changing, I publish it at least once each year, sometimes more often. I find it a positive, declarative prayer of praise and thankfulness. It is my sincere hope that you find it as helpful as I have.
Father of Lights
Father of Lights, you have said that in aligning with you I am a Child of the Light. I thank you for that honor and privilege and also thank you that you have made me a new creation. Today, I seek to take possession of my reborn identity in you and I thank you for providing me with the ability to do so, through the blessed work of the Holy Spirit.
Father, I know you have placed in me from birth a right, preserving and steadfast spirit and I know that the Holy Spirit will empower me to contact, develop, embrace and enhance those divine qualities, all to your glory and for the sake of others as well as for the purpose of growing in sacred character.
I know Father that above all, you are a God of restoration and a God of renewal. I know that according to your holy Word, that you are, at this very moment, renewing in me the mind of Christ – the most sacred mind. Your Spirit is at work in me today, enabling me to live a life of integrity, enthusiasm and empowering me to maintain a commitment to excellence. I thank you Father for your faithfulness and the blessings you are bestowing on me today, both seen and unseen.
Father, thank you for your unfailing faithfulness. You have proven time and time again that you are there, walking as my companion, even when I don’t see you and even more when I don’t acknowledge your presence. I know that you have said that you desire my best and that all things, whether I can understand them or not, work together for my greatest good. Therefore, looking to you, I expect good and good alone.
Father of Lights:
I thank you for your presence with me;
I thank you for your presence in me;
I thank you for protecting me;
I thank you for providing for me;
I thank you for empowering me.
I am grateful my Lord, knowing that I will find in you all I will ever need.
(In the name of Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega – the name at which every knee shall
A 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck Yunnan Province in southwest China on Sunday at 4 pm local time. The death toll at this time stands at 221 with many still missing. Please offer up prayers for those impacted by this natural disaster. We at LifeBrook are especially close to the Chinese people as my wife is Chinese and we served in China for over five years. In fact, we have friends from China visiting this weekend. Please cover this situation with prayer.
I first published this prayer back in 2009 and it first appeared here on LifeBrook on New Years Day, 2011. I think it is a powerful little prayer and I have benefited in many ways from its use. I suggest that you give it a try. Like most declarative or affirmative prayers, speak the words with the positive faith and conviction that comes from the awareness that we serve a God of integrity and love, a God who loves us and desires the very best for us:
Today is indeed the first day of a blessed New Year, and today is also the first day of the rest of my life.
I affirm that this year, 2015, will be a year of resurrection, renewal, and restoration and I greet this year with enthusiasm, confidence, and passion. This confident passion arises from my acceptance that in Christ I am a new creation, and that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Today I know that the old is passing away and that the new has been born. I am a being of Light, Love, and Spirit, committed to spiritual growth, service to others, and to becoming the optimal version of myself.
Today I passionately declare that through the power of the blessed Holy Spirit I am forgetting those things that are behind and reaching forward to those things that are ahead. I press forward into this new year toward the goal and the prize of the upward call of God in Christ.
When we wake up for a new day we are given the opportunity to be self-controlled or Spirit-controlled. Making the right choice each new day is critical to how our day begins and ends. …..when I wake up and start my day as a Spirit-controlled person…..I start my day on my knees in prayer, reflecting on the Scriptures as my life guide and anchor. I consider the needs of others more important than my own. I bend with agility toward the agendas of others while maintaining a focus on the mission God has called me to fulfill. I choose to look for ways I can affirm others, building them up so their best interests are served. I function as a servant to God and others and find joy, peace, fulfillment, and hope in living life with such vitality.
For most of us, life in contemporary society is a hectic affair. Myriad responsibilities send us on our way each day as we scamper here and scamper there just trying to keep up with our daily duties. It is easy to see how we can become spiritually desensitized in a situation such as this. We lose our connection with the divine and, in doing so, we often miss the blessings of the day, both great and small.
Below is a declarative prayer I penned a few years back. I noticed that when I prayed this prayer consistently over a period of thiry days, very positive things began to happen. I began to notice things I didn’t notice before, my mood lightened considerably, and most significant of all, I once again felt a vital connection with the Holy Spirit as he walked beside me each and every day. The prayer is entitled “The Blessings of Today” and it goes something like this:
Today is indeed the first day of the rest of my life –
Today is a day of resurrection, renewal, and restoration and I greet this day with enthusiasm, confidence, and passion.
This confident passion arises from my acceptance that in Christ I am a new creation and that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Today I know that the old indeed is passing away and that the new has been born. I am a being of light and love, committed to my spiritual growth, service to others, and becoming the optimal version of myself.
Today I declare, along with the Great Apostle, that with the power of the Holy Spirit, I am forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. I press forward into the future toward the goal and the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Below is a personal prayer I penned at a special time in my life. Over the years, I have found this prayer to be both inspirational and empowering. It is my hope that it may be of use to any reader that might want to utilize it. It is called “Father of Lights” and it goes something like this:
Father of Lights, you have said that in aligning with you I am a Child of the Light. I thank you for that honor and privilege and also thank you that you have made me a new creation. Today, I seek to take possession of my reborn identity in you and I thank you for providing me with the ability to do so, through the blessed work of the Holy Spirit.
Father, I know you have placed in me from birth a right, preserving and steadfast spirit and I know that the Holy Spirit will empower me to contact, develop, embrace and enhance those divine qualities, all to your glory and for the sake of others as well as for the purpose of growing in sacred character.
I know Father that above all, you are a God of restoration and a God of renewal. I know that according to your holy Word, that you are, at this very moment, renewing in me the mind of Christ – the most sacred mind. Your Spirit is at work in me today, enabling me to live a life of integrity, enthusiasm and empowering me to maintain a commitment to excellence. I thank you Father for your faithfulness and the blessings you are bestowing on me today, both seen and unseen.
Father, thank you for your unfailing faithfulness. You have proven time and time again that you are there, walking as my companion, even when I don’t see you and even more when I don’t acknowledge your presence. I know that you have said that you desire my best and that all things, whether I can understand them or not, work together for my greatest good. Therefore, looking to you, I expect good and good alone.
Father of Lights:
I thank you for your presence with me;
I thank you for your presence in me;I thank you for protecting me;
I thank you for providing for me;
I thank you for empowering me.
I am grateful my Lord, knowing that I will find in you all I will ever need.
Crippling poverty has been a daily reality for far too many people for as long as history has been recorded. In spite of the great advances in agriculture and other life sciences, for countless people around the globe each day is a struggle for survival, a never-ending search for food and clean drinking water. It is estimated that 25,000 children die each day from starvation and illness directly related to poverty. If we lay claim to the mantle of Christian, we cannot ignore these realities.
Many of us feel there is nothing that we can do to make a dent in the problem of global poverty. We cite lack of money, lack of time, and countless others “lacks” when called upon to take positive steps of Christian love to address chronic poverty, even in our own neighborhoods and cities. I have little doubt that tears flow in the heavenly realms each time we hide behind our “lacks.”
There is one thing that we all can do, however: We can pray. If we truly believe in the effectiveness of prayer, and as followers of Jesus we have plenty of reason to believe, then we surely understand that by praying for those in poverty we can accomplish great things. Further, we can all find the time to offer up intentional intercession on behalf of those in dire need. In his book A Hole in Our Gospel, World Vision director Richard Stearns shares these words, penned by his colleague John Robb:
Wherever in the world there is significant development – people coming to Christ, health improvements, economic opportunities, adoption of kingdom values – it is the direct result of Christians praying.
I strongly believe what Robb is saying. During the years I spent working with AIDS patients, veterans, and the homeless in Dade County, Florida, I personally witnessed the miracles that can be brought about through prayer. The same is true for the five years of front line service in China. Without a strong foundation of prayer, little could have been accomplished.
Intentional intercessory prayer on behalf of those mired in poverty can be done in your private devotion time, or it can be done as a group project. Another way to make this kind of prayer a part of your daily living is to follow the seven steps suggested by Richard Stearns:
v When you take your morning shower, pray for families in poor countries who do not have access to clean water, forcing mothers to spend hours collecting inadequate water and causing children suffer and even die from water-related diseases.
v When you pack your lunch, or your child’s lunch, pray for the one billion people who are chronically hungry in the world today.
v As you commute to your job, pray for the adults around the world who can’t find consistent work to feed their families, or pray for the millions of children forced into harmful or exploitative labor.
v When you drop your child off at school, pray for children around the world who cannot get an education because of poverty or discrimination.
v As you take a vitamin, pray for the families without adequate health care, leaving them and especially their children vulnerable to preventable diseases.
v When you arrive home after work, pray for the children and families who are homeless due to poverty, conflict, or natural disasters.
v As you tuck your children into bed, guide them to pray for the millions of children who have lost their parents around the world – especially the fifteen million AIDS orphans around the world, many of whom must survive without guardians.
Stearns suggestions are just that, suggestions. However, if you make a committed and diligent effort to make these prayers a part of your daily round for the next thirty days or so, you may very well have a significant impact on someone in need. Never discount or minimize the power of committed prayer. Time and time again it has been shown to work wonders.
I would also suggest that you pick up a copy of Stearns’ book, The Hole in Our Gospel. Spend quality time with this book, slowly imbibing the practical wisdom contained in its pages and the inspiration gleaned from the author’s candid revelations regarding his own journey from corporate president to a front line, leadership role with World Vision. It will be time well spent.
I vividly remember the confusion I sometimes felt during my first few months living in China. Talk about stepping out of my comfort zone. I was halfway around the world and suddenly thrust into a culture that was totally alien to me. I quickly realized that if I wanted to have a peaceful, orderly, and successful life, I needed to understand how the various rules and laws of behavior worked in that fascinating culture.
The same principle holds true when it comes to walking out our Christian faith on a daily basis. If we want to be successful, if we want to be all that God intends for us to be, we need to come to a deep understanding of certain spiritual laws and more importantly, how to implement those laws for their maximum benefit.
Dr. I.V. Hilliard, in his landmark book Living the Maximized Life, describes a series of seven spiritual laws that are indispensable in the life of a Christ-follower. According to Dr. Hilliard, if we apply ourselves to the implementation of these laws our efforts will not be in vain. These laws are as follows:
The Law of Perspective
The Law of Passion
The Law of Priority
The Law of Petition
The Law of Pattern
The Law of Profession
The Law of Progression
Dr. Hilliard asserts that implementation of these laws will enable us to “maximize life situations,” both positive and troublesome. Here at LifeBrook we frequently verbalize our mission statement, which is to:
Provide encouragement that will assist people to become the optimal version of themselves for the glory of God and the benefit of others.
Speaking from personal experience, I can say without reservation that these laws, when diligently applied, will greatly assist any Christian desirous of a rewarding, fulfilling spiritual life. Let us now turn to a brief discussion of each of these principles.
The Law of Perspective
The Law of Perspective is primarily concerned with vision and focus. God has implanted a personal calling, a mission, in the heart of each and every child of the Light. A personal “vision” involves the specific ways in which the Christ-follower will realize that calling. The vision provides perspective, a blueprint, and a matrix which helps the person make effective plans and precise decisions. In the words of Dr. Hilliard:
The Bible has multitudes of scriptures admonishing believers to control their visual focus. Seeing your future from God’s perspective is critical to accurate management of your mind. The term “vision” has the most dynamic and multi-faceted meaning. It means both natural visual perception and spiritual internal vision (or imagination).
God instructed Abram (later called Abraham) in how to look at things from a divine perspective – to get the God-sized big picture. In doing so, this enabled Abram to see more clearly and, at the same time, exercise his faith in God. Dr. Hilliard explains:
Abram is instructed to look from where he is to where he wants to go. This simple principle of focus will transform your life as you immerse yourself in images of the new you in possession of your faith’s desires.
The Law of Passion
Passion is a sacred fuel that gives us the necessary drive to keep pursuing our desired outcome, even when the going gets rough. When we have passion about something, we give 110 percent, even when we don’t feel like giving 25 percent; passion is that which transforms average into good and good into great.
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Dr. Hilliard comments:
You and I will be filled, satisfied at the level of our hunger and thirst for the things of God. Hunger and thirst are synonymous terms for passion. I really like this passage because of the guarantee that is incorporated in the text. If you and I hunger and thirst for righteousness, then we can rest assured that God will empower us to obtain the righteous objectives we are passionate about. Learning how to stir up a hunger and a thirst for something is the key.
When we hunger and thirst we are passionate and when we are passionate and proactive, our chances of spiritual success are multiplied many times over.
The Law of Priority
Let’s face it, life in contemporary America is both fast-paced and complicated. Multi-tasking has become a seeming necessity, just to get by and for most of us, life can easily devolve into a juggling act at a moment’s notice. The fact is, unless we learn to set priorities we can easily find our self in a situation where trivial matters take precedent over critical issues – in essence – we end up majoring in the minors.
Dr. Hilliard stresses the importance of prioritizing, which he defines as making a focused effort on something, by stating:
The law of priority reveals the power of focused effort and discipline, which lead to skill and mastery. Understanding how to see priorities in life is critical if one wants to develop and implement a strategy to maximize life’s opportunities. Things that are highly valued and yield the most desirable results must be given priority.
The Law of Petition
The Law of Petition is intimately connected with the discipline of prayer and its dynamics are straightforward and simple. Dr. Hilliard reminds us that:
The law of petition is founded on the power of prayer and the Godly promises made to believers who will pray. Understanding these simple rules for prayer will equip and empower believers for maximized living. There is no substitute for a commitment to a time of daily prayer and spiritual devotion.
Put simply, if we expect to have success in God’s plan for our lives we have to establish and maintain consistent lines of communication with him.
The Law of Pattern
Although individual creativity, thinking out of the box, and trying out new things are all vitally important in navigating life, there are also times when following an established methodology for achieving success is the best strategy. We don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. Dr. Hilliard discusses the wisdom of following proven pathways when he says:
The law of pattern mandates that when we follow a proven plan of action or model the traits of other successful people out of a pure heart, we will eventually get similar results. “That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Hebrews 6:12). If you work according to a proven pattern, you will achieve the same results others have attained.
The Law of Profession
The Law of Profession has to do with the words we speak and, in secular circles, is often referred to as “affirmation.” The primary difference here is that in “profession” the words we declare in positive prayer are in agreement with the Bible and its promises. There are many scriptural passages that affirm this principle but perhaps the most well-known is Mark 11:23-24:
I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, “May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,” and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you the truth, you can pray for anything, and if you believe you have received it, it will be yours.
The Law of Progression
The Law of Progression can be summed up this way: Spiritual success is a process, not an event. Dr. Hilliard describes it this way:
The law of progression says the consistent effort of a proven plan of action will eventually produce the desired results on a gradual basis! The law of progression says things change little by little…………Our journey of success was not one giant leap, but a step-by-step process.
Jesus, as was often the case, turned to the natural world for examples that clearly describe the principle he is teaching. In Mark 4:26-28 the Master states:
So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast a seed into the ground, and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.
An ear of corn is a process, not an event. The miracle of growth unfolds over a period of time and the same principle applies to matters of the spirit. We grow into Christ-character one small step at a time.
Taken as a whole, these seven principles operate together to help us achieve success in whatever our area of endeavor. The primary arena, however, where these principles may prove their effectiveness is in matters of spiritual formation. These spiritual laws have proven their beneficial nature time and time again and they will do so in our lives if we diligently apply them. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can honor God and glorify the Master by becoming the very best that we can be – the optimal version of who and what we are.
Many of my ancestors hailed from Northern Ireland for the most part and I have always had a great affinity for the Celtic traditions of spirituality. I tend to think that Celtic Christianity was and still is one of the most natural and profound streams of the faith that can be found. In this light, I wanted to share with you this simple saying from the Celtic tradition. When you boil off all the theological excesses that have latched onto Christianity like ravenous parasites, you can often get back to the beating heart of the Christian heritage. This little piece of spiritual direction does that I think:
LifeBrook 