Not long ago, Andrew Boone, the Family Life Pastor at New Covenant Bible church, added something to his prayer life. It turned out to be a powerful phrase that helped him in a variety of ways. Read on and learn this simple, yet powerful phrase.

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Recently, I added a daily prayer to my prayer list. I've found it to be beneficial and maybe you will, too. It's quite short:

Lord, I delight in you. Help me to delight in you more and more today.

Then I'll pray through the things going on in the next 24 hours and declare that I delight in the Lord more than any of those things. It's simple, but it's powerful in a few ways.

First, it's based on Scripture. Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart." This prayer takes me back to the Bible and meditating on God’s Word.

Second, it acknowledges that I do delight in the LORD (all caps —Yahweh — the covenant name for God the Father), but my delight is not what it should be, or what I desire it to be. I want my delight in the Lord to be so much deeper and richer. I want to cherish my Savior much more than I do now, and this acknowledgment brings me to a place of healthy confession.

Third, it helps me proactively go into situations with a God-first perspective. Life comes at me fast -- I’m sure it does for you, too. Praying about the upcoming day, especially where my affections are stored, better prepares me to navigate the expected and the unexpected.

Lastly, this prayer helps me recalibrate how I see the things that could otherwise be delight-stealers. Delicious food is good, meaningful work is good, working out is good (at least I think it is), my marriage is good, my truck is good, my friends are good, and I have so many other good things in my life. They're all good and to be enjoyed. But this prayer helps me to see them as good gifts from a great and glorious Lord who is my true delight. I have to recalibrate that view often because I can quickly forget and begin to delight in them in ways that I should reserve only for God.
Similarly, this prayer reframes how I see disappointments. As I pray over the upcoming day, I see circumstances, people, and tasks that are discouraging and could easily drain me of delight. But my delight is in God, not in those challenges. Praying into tough moments, and asking God to increase my delight in Him, prepares me to enter into them with a healthy perspective.

Lord, I delight in you. Help me to delight in you more and more today.