My Prayer


"And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’The second is this:‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Jesus (Mark 12:30-31 ESV)

Ahh, this has been the prayer of my heart for some time now. I think that I have prayed it almost daily for my family for over 8 years now. It is usually what I pray when I wake up in the middle of the night. Many times when asked if I have any prayer requests this is what I ask for myself and my family.

My prayer has gone something like this: Father God, please help Cary and I, Kayla, Katina, Keanan and Kenton to love You with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves -beginning with one another.

Why have I made this my almost daily prayer? Because Jesus said that this is the greatest commandment and if I love God and love man I will fulfill all the commandments. It is my prayer because I know that we are unable to do it. We are not naturally lovers of anyone but ourselves. This is why sin persists and Jesus had to die for us. We, in and of ourselves will always put ourselves first. “My rights, my desires , my time, my wants are all more important than yours.” We are idolators and self is what we live for. It is my prayer because He is worthy and I want to follow Him and honor Him and bring Him joy.

I've also realized and added to this prayer that we come to know more and more that God loves us because 1 John 4:19 says that: "We love because He first loved us." In fact, we are simply unable to love God in this way on our own and especially if we do not know Him, believing and understanding that He loves us. As we get to know Him and how greatly He has and will steadfastly love us we will in turn love Him more and more. If we could just realize how great God is and how greatly He loves us we could rest and hope in Him, finding peace; in the day to day, from the past and looking into the future. He has never not been faithful. He always, always acts in love towards us. How quickly we forget. O Lord, help us remember Your faithfulness! Help us to remember: 
"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
1 John 4:9-10 ESV

“Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so” is not just a children's song it is a 

profound truth that we claim to believe but often live as though we have forgotten or 

don't believe that God sent His only Son to die for us. How different our lives would look 

if we truly believed that God loves us and is for us.


Paul prays for the Ephesians: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from 

whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of 

His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your 

inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being 

rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what 

is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that 

surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:14-19 ESV

 O Father in heaven, may it be true for this Hembree herd!


"And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live." [Deuteronomy 30:6 ESV]

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