Choose Your Word! A New Year’s Practice for a Life of SurrenderSample

For the last several years, I’ve concluded pastor conferences and seminary classes by inviting hearers to read aloud a Yours prayer. The powerful prayer of abandonment was sent to me. I made biblical and theological adjustments to the original verbiage and have distributed it to thousands.

This deep prayer cannot be read carelessly. As a conclusion to this devotional reading plan, would you read the prayer below slowly and deliberately? Note which lines are most difficult for you to pray, and ask God to help you through His Spirit.

Yours Prayer

Lord, I give myself to fully follow You, whatever it may mean. Take every aspect of my life and use me for Your purposes to glorify Your name. I’m not here on earth to do my own thing, to seek my own fulfillment or my own glory. I’m not here to indulge my flesh, to increase my possessions, to impress people, to be popular, to prove I’m somebody important, or to promote myself. I’m not here even to be relevant or successful by human standards. I’m here to please You.

I’ll do anything You want me to do as long as You lead me; go anywhere You want me to go since You will go with me; and say anything that You want me to say as long as You will fill me. Teach me, guide me, empower me as I run the ministry race.

Father, there isn’t any gift You have for me I don’t want. If You want me to wait to accomplish Your work, I will. If You want to use me in a way that I’m not used to, I yield myself to that. I trust You, Lord, to do that which I cannot do for myself. Today I affirm my love for You, my God, and I choose to live and minister in Your way for the rest of my life. To the glory of the Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the name of the Lord Jesus, for the health of the church, and the very best of many everywhere, I ask these things. Amen.

(Ruth Myers, Cindy Jacobs, Dale Schlafer, Ramesh Richard)