This Valentines Day, maybe you feel all the love one heart could hold. Maybe you are struggling, yet hopeful. Maybe you’re hanging on, barely staying afloat, or maybe you’re at rock bottom, needing a hand up.

Would you allow me to do for you the one thing I know to be the most effective in encouraging, equipping, heartening and hope-fueling a weary soul? 

A Valentines Day prayer for you.

My Kings—Father, Good Shepherd, Counselor—thank you for hearing and delighting in our prayers. Thank you for your presence, peace and light. Thank you most of all for your precious blood, sweet Savior, allowing me passage to the Holy of Holies, your Throne Room. I am honored and humbled to come before you on behalf of my friend, your child. 

If they are weary, fill them with your joy, their ultimate source of strength.  

When they are overwhelmed, fill them with shalom, your overwhelming peace, to flood their soul with calm, wholeness and serenity.

When they are buried in burden, remind them of your offer to exchange burdens for your light and easy way, because your way brings light and ease to both mind and heart.

When your presence feels more shadowy than lucent, remind them of your steadfast love and light. Illuminate their mind with your faithful presence reminding them of your past goodness. Draw them close and spotlight your truth like the full moon glowing white-hot as a guide in the darkest night of the soul. 

When heart-wounds are gaping, filled with emptiness or pain, wrap them in the warmth of your love. Shelter them from all evil, further pain, and the stony hardness that comes from holding tightly to past pain.

If they can’t see the path marked for them, may your light reveal the next step. As the morning sun alights upon sleepy meadows and mountain springs, may your light awaken their mind to new depths of your wisdom.

When anxiety or depression threatens war upon their joy, may you fiercely protect, guard and keep what’s yours—their heart and mind.

If they are suffering loss, be ever-present, Comforter. Carry, console, soothe, hearten, encourage, reassure, and quiet, to the utter depths of their suffering. May they know your comforting presence at this moment as never before—when the loss is greatest, the pain is deepest and hope most distant. 

When they are hopeless, show them your glory. Reveal your goodness, beauty and truth in ways fresh and new. Remind them of your good plans for them, especially if they don’t seem good now. Help them remember that even when it seems darkest, and they can’t take the pain one minute more, you are with them, desiring to carry, comfort, strengthen, and heal.

When they question, remind them doubt does not disqualify your deliverance. Help them hold on until your perfect timing unfolds and trust you aren’t a God of take-backs.

Where there is confusion, bring clarity. May your wisdom bear new vision, fresh faith and abundant peace reminding them whatever it is, you already have the answer, know the plan, understand the need. Remind them their job is to press in, stay close and trust their good Father.

My Kings, whatever they need, will you supply, show up, sustain, shelter, bestow? Remind them you are a good and generous God, owning the cattle on a thousand hills. And as daughters and sons of the King, they have access to all your resources.

May they know you are the good and true King who opens wide his welcoming arms! Let the gates open and the procession begin as daughters and sons make their way home to the Kingdom and its beloved King!

You are one in whom Christ dwells and delights. You live in the strong and unshakable Kingdom of God. His Kingdom is not in trouble, and neither are you. James Bryan Smith

Dear one!