Everyday Prayers by Scotty Smith

Below is a portion of a prayer from Everyday Prayers by Scotty Smith:

I praise you for friends who’ve helped me understand the lyric of the gospel—theology. As a young convert my arrogant mantra was, “Don’t give me theology, just give me Jesus.” My sentiments were good, but my sensibilities were shoddy. To speak the name Jesus is to do theology. Thank you for patient teachers who have opened the Scriptures and have shown me the real Jesus—the one who lived and died in my place and who is making all things new. 

I praise you for friends who’ve helped me hear and experience the music of the gospel. For those broken and beautiful saints who have helped me get a taste of the radical goodness of the gospel—its life-giving liberty, its healing melody, its soul-engaging joy—I praise you, Father. Now I know you to be a God who greatly delights in your people, who quiets us with his love, who rejoices over us with singing. This is astonishing, even shocking, and it’s all because of what Jesus has done for us. 

I praise you for friends who’ve been modeling the missional dance of the gospel for me. It’s encouraging and challenging to discover the whole world as the dance floor of grace. Father, you created all things and you are redeeming all things, and when you get wild prodigals and stuffy elder brothers into your dance of the gospel, you take the dance outside of the house into our neighborhoods and among the nations. Thank you for my dance instructors.