An Evening Prayer

Whew! You’ve made it through another day. There have been pleasures and pressures, victories and defeats. Are you the kind of person who has taken responsibility not only for your own life but also for those of your family and community? That’s a heavy burden to carry every day.In my tribe, we strive for excellence and integrity, but we also admit, “It’s hard to be consistent.” I end most days with a mixture of gratitude, pain, and regret. I think most honest and mature men do too.

I’m grateful for the victories and successes. I’m grateful to look back and see the influence of the Word and Spirit in my perspectives and responses. I’m pained by the burdens I’ve encountered as I’ve sought to minister to God’s people and love my neighbor as myself. I’m pained when I see those who don’t know Jesus bang their heads against the proverbial wall again. Sin is real, and its presence in our reality manifests itself in a thousand painful ways every day.

I regret being worldly, fleshly, and selfish. This is always the result of looking away from Jesus. But over all of these is the conviction that in Jesus, I remain acceptable to the Father, that my Savior is my sympathetic High Priest, and that the Holy Spirit abides in me. I find rest in Jesus by reminding myself that the goal of any day as His follower is not perfection, but proficiency. Every day, I’m being sanctified. And by that, I mean I’m demonstrating—through my flawed life—the identity that God has provided me in Jesus. I am, as I believe every believer is, a daily drama of redemption and grace, failure and mercy, hope and security.

A Prayer to End the Day

Here’s a prayer I’m learning to say at the end of my day as a complement to the prayer that starts my day. Again, it’s a mix of Old Testament truth, New Testament realities, and lived personal experience. Modify it as you see fit:

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings sleep to my eyes and slumber to my eyelids. May it be Your will, Lord my God, that I lie down in peace and that I arise in peace. Grant me the sweet sleep of the righteous. You never slumber, so as I do, watch over me, my family, and Your people as the watchful Shepherd of our souls. In my sleep, remind me of mortality and the death to come. In my awakening in the morning, remind me of the resurrection that will be.

I have found that, in addition to developing a distinctive discipline of prayer, praying this way before falling asleep has routinely resulted in better sleep! There’s something about ending the day with a prayer like this that allows both the brain and soul to rest. Even if that’s not your experience, ending your day in prayer is still a great discipline to practice. After all, what could be wrong with reminding yourself that your God is in control of everything—because He neither sleeps nor slumbers—while you do?