This Cleansing Prayer Accepting God’s Grace is needed because even when we try hard to be our best selves there’s always a hidden part of our thoughts or actions that aren’t good and pure.  Thankfully, God’s grace and cleansing power are available to us every day.  Here is a prayer to help us accept and use God’s helping power to be renewed, cleaned, refreshed and changed daily.

Cleansing Prayer Accepting God’s Grace

Dear Heavenly Father,

You are the great I Am. You are masterful in all that You do. I am humbled that You have even a moments time for me and yet You are there for me every moment in my life.

God, thank you for cleansing my soul. There are times when the lessons are difficult but the outcome is worth the struggle. Thank you for your patience. You have waited many years as I tried to take care of things on my own.

I know that I hurt you by tuning to others before finally coming to You. And yet You welcome me with open arms and celebrated that I found my way.

Lord, I ask that You continue to show me the parts of my thoughts and actions that are a reflection of the stains on my soul.

Please continue to walk with me and guide me to make the changes that I must make so that I no longer cause you pain. I want my life to bring You joy and for it to be a celebration of Your love.

I am so grateful that You never gave up on me, that You extended Your grace to me and although I didn’t accept it at first You never pulled it away.

Please help me to never give up on others. Instead please use my life so that others may want to know You. It is only through You, Lord that the pristine beauty that is within each of us can be found.

Thank you for the lessons You teach me in everyday, typical and often mundane routines. Please help me to have my eyes and heart open to receiving these lessons. With each lesson I can feel the change, the cleansing of my soul. The flow of the cleansing water as it washes away the dirt and stains.

You are magnificent beyond words. I don’t want to live another day without You. A life without Your love and grace is a dead life. My words are insufficient to describe a Life with Your love. Please guide me.

In the name of Jesus Christ I pray.

Amen.

Lessons about cleansing prayer and accepting God’s Grace I learned while trying to clean a conch shell.

I have had a large conch shell as part of my collection of things for many years. Growing up near the beach, I was used to seeing shells included as décor in homes. My mother had a conch she used as a planter for a beautiful fern-like plant..

When I got my first apartment I didn’t have a couch but I had a conch shell with a plant in it. I had it on display in my home through college, until I married and moved three times. On my final move the plant was taken out of the conch and the shell was relegated to the basement where it has sat, gathering dust, for 28 years.

Recently I brought the conch shell up from the basement and discovered there was still dirt inside. As I began dumping the dirt out I realized just how big the inside of the conch must be. Each time I thought I had the conch emptied a new clump of dirt would peek around the inside curve just out of my reach. I dug at the dirt with a toothpick but couldn’t reach it. I asked my husband to get me a bamboo skewer and after several attempts the conch was empty of its old dirt.

My plan was to make a drawing of the conch. So, I wanted it in pristine condition. However, after decades of sitting in the basement and still filled with old dirt from a past plant the conch was left with huge areas of brown stain and built up grime. I scrubbed the shell but had only a little success. I went to the laundry room and grabbed the Clorox. But, just as quickly as I had decided to get the Clorox I put it back. I thought the Clorox may be too harsh on the shell and may damage it.

Instead I decided to fill the kitchen sink with water and soak the conch. As the water rose the pink inside the shell started to glisten. The shell was still stained. The water had risen about halfway up the shell when a transformation began. I took my hand and diverted the water so that it washed over the top of the shell. Gradually, small pinholes appeared in the shell. The added a beauty to the shell I had never seen in the 35 plus years it had been in my collection. I was taken aback by what I was unaware of about the shell.

As I continued to watch the shell and feel the water as it washed over my hand I realized that what I am seeing take place here in my kitchen sink is a reminder to me of what God is doing in my life.

Letting God cleanse me of the things inside of me that were keeping me from having a close relationship with God

Over the years I have learned how to look good on the outside while being filled on the inside with things that keep me separated from a close relationship with God. Things like jealousy, envy, and temptations.

I have spent many hours and a lot of energy not letting it show so the outside would be reminiscent of the beautiful plant in a masterfully designed conch. I would do good things for others, fight temptations, and work on being kind, even trying to overcome the jealousy, envy and my insecurities.

Eventually I figured out all the scrubbing I did would only clean a spot here or there but it never lasted for very long. Even when I implored others to help, I couldn’t remove the stains from the past or my outlook on my present and definitely not on the future.

It was the moment I received God’s grace that the everlasting cleansing of my soul began.

I have to admit that my first instinct was to be angry with myself when I came to understand that the grace was always there. I was angry because I had spent years spinning my wheels when all I had to do was accept what God had been offering all along. However, I realized my anger was part of the stains God was going to remove; I shifted my focus on letting Him into my life.

God doesn’t change everything about you at once.  Instead He meets you where you are

I have gradually learned to soak up what He is showing me in the moment. He doesn’t ask me to change everything at once. Instead, He meets me where I am. He only shares with me the things that I am ready to face with Him. Therefore, my stains are not all removed.

My experience has been that once He has removed one stain I soon become aware of another one that I didn’t realize even existed. Kind of like the clumps of dirt that kept coming out of he the core of the conch.

The most significant thought for me as I watched the conch transform is that I must soak my soul in the cleansing grace of God if I want to be pristine and presentable so that one day I may stand before Him.

I also thought how sad I would be if I had something precious in my collection and I knew the beauty it had the potential to be but instead it remained stained and dirty. God created me for a purpose, and I turned away. I trusted in myself. I trusted in the things of this world rather than in Him. Yet He doesn’t bring that up. He accepts me for whom I am, and doesn’t hold my past against me.

It was so easy to call myself a Christian. I could even prove it by being a member of a church; attend Sunday school or bible study classes. I could do charity work and use proper language and dress but by acting this way I was only the image of what we stereotypically think a Christian looks like. For me to call myself a Christian now, I need for all my thoughts and actions to come as a result of my relationship with God. To the world I may not look very different because I am doing many of the same stereotypical things but to me I am a different person. I am a person who has accepted the grace of God, a person who has a relationship with the creator of all, and I have received this relationship due to the sacrifice He made for me through His Son.

I am grateful for His grace, for my relationship with Him and for His continual cleansing of my soul.

Bible verses for Cleansing Prayer to Accept God’s Grace

 Romans 3:23-24  For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption, which is Christ Jesus;  (All quotes are from the English Standard version of the Bible)

Acts 20:32  And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

Ephesians 2:4-9  But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that none may boast.

2 Peter 3:17-18  take care that you are not carried away with the error of flawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

Hebrew 4:16  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrew 10:22  Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Titus 2:11-14  For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works.

1 Timothy 1:14  I thank Him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful, appointing me to His service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Other helpful articles by Letitia Barnes

Getting Over Rejection Prayer

Having a Bad Day Prayer When Everything Goes Wrong

Trusting God Prayer When You’re Asking God Why He Let Things Happen

Deciding the Next Step Prayer When You’re Not Sure What Comes Next

Abuse Prayer: Surviving and Overcoming Using Strong Bible Affirmations

Copyright Letitia Barnes 2018.  All rights reserved.

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