Dear Lord,

I want to thank you for everything you have given me in my life. I know that I am undeserving of your grace and love. Yet, while I am undeserving of your love, every day, I wake up with air in my lungs and the opportunity to serve your people. I want to thank you, Lord, for all you have done in my life. When I was younger, I hated you. I shunned you and I disregarded everything you had done for me. As I sit here today, I am deeply filled with sorrow for my actions of when I was younger. I was young and naive about who you were, and as I think about the person I am today versus who I was so many years ago, I want to thank you for changing me.

So Lord, in order to better serve you, I have but only one prayer in my heart right now, please Lord: break my heart. Lord, I pray you that you break my heart to the world around me. For so long Lord, I have been looking at this world like everything is perfect, but I am wrong. There is so much destruction and hurt in this world--the world that YOU created, and truly, I am heart broken. For too long, I thought that this destruction and sin in this world was just "something we had to deal with"--that it was just something everyone "did."

Lord, I now know that I am wrong, and this sin that is in this world is destructive. People are setting their own selfish needs above the needs of others. It is because of that, we now live in a society that turns a blind eye to the problems around us and enjoy playing the “my life sucks more game” with one another.

Lord, I am begging you, help me to see the struggles of those around me and to become empathetic to those needs. I do not want to become so wrapped up in my own self that I forget that you have called those around me to walk hard times as well. I do not want to forget that there will be days in everyone’s life that they feel as if all hope is gone. Lord, help me to show your children that hope does not go, even when times are hard and even though hope seems like it is gone.

I am praying for open eyes and empathy—to feel the heartache that you feel every day when your sons and daughters struggle. I do not want to go through this life unaware of the troubles around me, but rather, I want to know what I can be doing to better aid those around me for your glory. “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is my strength forever,” Psalm 73:26. I am asking for your strength and your guidance now Lord. Break my heart for what breaks yours and never let me be content with the sorrow I see in this world.