Prayer Exercise for Sunday, March 22 - Saturday, March 28

Relinquishment Prayer

 

Relinquishment prayer comes through our lived experiences -- life, work, home, and families, as such it is “practiced” prayer.  We often think about relinquishing our will to God in big or significant decisions that will affect direction and choices.  This is certainly what encompasses relinquishment prayer, but it is also prayer that comes from within -- the places and times when we have suffered.  It may include something you very much want to have happen -- a desire, or something that did not happen -- a disappointment, a betrayal and/or a relationship or something that is overwhelming.  In relinquishing we are releasing -- our desire for control, our outcomes, our way to God.  This is not a “once and done” kind of prayer.  There is a process in this prayer that asks us to give it time and repetition.  In relinquishment prayer we move through yielding our will and the situation to trusting God.  The result of relinquishment prayer reflects what Jesus experienced: a settled peace, new courage, clarity of heart and mind (Morse, 139).  Relinquishment prayer invites us to a lifestyle of bringing to God all of life’s struggles and doubts. (Morse 139).

 

Prayer Exercise: 15 minutes a day for 3 or 4 days:

It is helpful to have a specific time to pray this prayer.  Think about what is troubling you a lot,  something that you are concerned about, bitter about,  distracted by or just do not want to do.  As an act of letting go and releasing you may find it helpful to kneel, lay prostrate or simply open your hands before you.  Prayer the prayer of relinquishment three times (if you feel you need to do this more than three times then feel free to do so).   Each of the three or four days bring the same thing to God or bring a different thing.  You may find it helpful to write about your experience in a journal to to share with a trusted friend.  

 

Prayer of Relinquishment:  “Abba, Father, if it is possible let this cup (name the area of concern).  Yet, not what I want, but what you want.”

 

On the last day of your prayer this week:  Read through Jeremiah 31:31-34.  Consider the hope and renewal presented in this passage.  

 

Prayer Sources:

  • Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home. (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 47-56.

  • MaryKate Morse, A Guidebook to Prayer: Twenty-four Ways to Walk With God. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 135-143.

  • William David Spencer and Aida Besancon Spencer, The Prayer Life of Jesus: Shout of Agony, Revelation of Love, a Commentary (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990), 229-233.


If you are interested in sharing how you experienced the prayer exercise this week, please send an e-mail to carol@tpctacoma.org