Growing up in the church, I sought after “upright” extracurricular activities. When I was young, I was in Cub Scouts, then Boy Scouts and all the way up to Eagle Scout. In high school, I was very involved in Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), and stayed with it until I enlisted in the Navy after getting my High School Diploma.

All of these organizations were driven by duty, honor, and a strong moral code. The best part was, they all had handy little creeds and mantras that help you remember the kind of person you should be striving to be.

Now-a-days, BSA has abandoned their morals for Pop-Sociology, and JROTC and the Navy are in my past. So when it comes to trying to remember a handy creed in times of uncertainty, I am left wanting.

I am no longer a sailor, so the sailor’s creed doesn’t fit, I have long outgrown JROTC, and I have a hard time living by creeds broken by those who wrote them. But after all of this, I remember the one title that remains above all else “Child of God”. Now, it’s hard to recite the whole Bible, and most theological creeds are focusing on communicating the basic tenants of faith, so I needed something else.

Prayers seem to have the same purpose as the “Scout Oath” or the “Sailor’s Creed” but interested of reminding the speaker of what to do, it’s asking God for help (which seems a little smarter to me). So, in search for something to carry with me in times that I need God the most, I compiled the following prayer from the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians and Ephesians:

For this reason we bow our heads before You Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

Blessed are You, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 

We pray that according to the riches of Your glory You may grant us to be strengthened with power through Your Spirit in our inner being, so that You may dwell in our hearts through faith, that we may be filled with all the fullness of You Lord.

We pray that we, being rooted and grounded in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, may have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love and comfort of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

Our hope in You is unshaken, for we know that if we are afflicted, it is a part of Your plan for other’s comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is also of Your plan for comfort and salvation.

Now to You who are able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to You be glory in the church and in Christ throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.