Prayer of Relinquishment

Letting go is hard.

We’ve been exploring the spiritual practice of letting go this month on Healthy Spirituality. I will have one more post on this topic this coming Thursday but ran across the Prayer of Relinquishment today and thought it fitting to share with you.

What is Relinquishment?

“No one is ever united with Jesus Christ until he is willing

to relinquish not sin only, but his whole way of looking at things…”

– Oswald Chamber

Relinquishment means to release or let go.

In the book titled Prayer – Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard Foster, he writes that “we begin to enter into a grace-filled releasing of our will and a flowing into the will of the Father. It is the prayer of relinquishment that moves us from the struggling to the releasing…this prayer is a bona fide letting go, but it is a release with hope… God is not destroying the will but transforming it so that…we can freely will what God wills.”

As I ponder this radical prayer, I discern my need to pray its words daily – as each day I resume my haphazard attempt at controlling my own life and need the reminder God is the one in control. A lifetime, an ongoing process of continuing to let go and let God.

I am finding it helpful to pray with open, palms upward hand, symbolizing my giving it all to God, not clinging with clinched fists. I often fill my hands and my heart with what I think will I need when God has wonderful blessings awaiting me if I would only release and reach up for him.

Slowly I learn to trust God.

Relinquishment – My will-filled must combusts into willing trust. Jean Wise

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The Prayer of Relinquishment

 

A Prayer of Relinquishment

Today, O Lord, I yield myself to you.

May your will be my delight today.

May your way have perfect sway in me.

May your love be the pattern of my living.

I surrender to you

my hopes,

my dreams,

my ambitions.

Do with them what you will, when you will, as you will.

I place into your loving care

my family,

my friends,

my future.

Care for them with a care that I can never give.

I release into your hands

my need to control,

my craving for status,

my fear of obscurity.

Eradicate the evil, purify the good, and establish your

kingdom on earth.

For Jesus’ sake,

Amen.

Richard Foster – From his book, titled Prayers of the Heart

I am going to simply sit with this prayer. What about you?

 

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