New Year's prayer

Happy New Year, reader!  It is officially 2019.  For the inaugural blog, I wanted to present a prayer that my dad once delivered for his calling as a Christian radio announcer.  My father, Jerry Bauer, was a man of faith and a man of prayer.  This is clear from the various prayers I’ve shared from him, but it is reinforced once again upon hearing this prayer.  Let me note that this is a prayer from New Year’s Eve, 2010.  So all throughout he says “2010” and “2011”; I’ve decided to edit them to the terms “the Current Year” and “the New Year.”  Here we go:

“Father,

We come to You with grateful hearts for Your faithfulness, and Your mercies that are new every morning.  We thank You for what You have given to us, each and every day.  You have blessed us in countless ways.  Could we count our blessings, and name them one by one?  We thank You for the treasure of health, and for provision in health challenges.  Thank You for the blessing of a job, and we ask that You would provide for those seeking employment.  We could go on and on, but we thank You for Your sweet, constant, and loving provision, [and] Your faithfulness, Father.

The current year is just about in the past and a memory to us.  For some it’s been a difficult year for a variety of reasons.  For some it’s been a great year.  But [soon] it is another page that goes down in history.  And the New Year lies before us.  We don’t know the future, but we do know that You hold our hand.  You will be with us, and give us blessings, provision, and protection from Your Almighty hand each day.

We pray that we will walk in the Spirit more in the New Year.  We surrender our goals, plans, and dreams to You, knowing that Your dreams for us are better than we could even imagine.  We pray that You will continue to do the good works that You have planned for us, since before the foundation of the world.

We pray that You would bless our families, friends, churches, and congregations.  We pray for our coworkers, our listeners, and for the supporters of this radio ministry.  We cannot get to each individual prayer request today, Father, but we do pray for all of those in our listening audience this afternoon; either here in the radio broadcast area, or even those listening on the Internet.  Please intercede for each need.  We lift the leaders, staff, and the board of this ministry up to You for blessing and direction.

We know that there will be things that we do not understand in the coming year, but let us just cling to You, no matter what.  You have not asked us to understand, but just that we obey, and let us be faithful in doing that, Father.

We surrender the New Year to You for Your blessings.  Once again, it is with grateful hearts that we pray.  Thank You for receiving us into Your throne room because of the work of Jesus Christ upon the cross.  Thank You for that cross and all that was done for us there.

We pray in Jesus Name, Amen."