Prayers for Guidance
These prayers ask God for direction — about work, relationships, moves, vocation, and the smaller daily choices that add up to a life.
They share a common posture: asking to want what God wants more than asking for a particular answer. That is the harder prayer, and the one the tradition keeps returning to.
18 prayers
- A Collect for Grace
The morning counterpart to "Lighten our darkness," prayed daily at Morning Prayer since 1549 and translated from a collect in the Gelasian…
- A Prayer for Children
A prayer for the young and for those raising them, adapted from the Book of Common Prayer's prayers "For Young Persons" and "For the Care…
- A Prayer for Daily Work and Provision
Drawn from the Book of Common Prayer's collect "For Every Man in His Work," this prayer treats ordinary labour as a genuine vocation rather…
- A Prayer for Discerning My Vocation
A contemporary prayer of discernment shaped by Ignatian spirituality, particularly the Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercises…
- Ave Maris Stella (Hail, Star of the Sea)
A Latin Marian hymn known from at least the ninth century and sung at Vespers on Marian feasts. The title “Star of the Sea” became one of…
- Come, Holy Spirit (Veni Sancte Spiritus)
The classic invocation of the Holy Spirit, used at Pentecost and before any work requiring discernment — councils, conclaves, examinations,…
- Gideon's Prayer of the Fleece
Gideon asks twice for a sign in the fleece, and God is patient with him both times. Christian tradition has read the dew on the fleece as…
- Joshua's Plea After Defeat
After the rout at Ai, Joshua tears his clothes and lies before the ark until evening, asking why God brought Israel over Jordan at all. A…
- Nehemiah's Prayer
News of a ruined city sends Nehemiah into days of fasting and prayer before he asks a single practical question. It joins honest confession…
- Novena to the Holy Spirit
This is the oldest novena in the Church — indeed the original one. It comes directly from Acts 1, where the apostles and Mary spent the…
- Prayer for Ordering a Life Wisely (St. Thomas Aquinas)
One of the prayers preserved in the Dominican collection of St. Thomas Aquinas's private devotions. It is a prayer about the shape of a…
- Prayer for the New Year
A traditional collect for the beginning of the civil year, used at watchnight services and New Year's Day worship in Anglican, Methodist,…
- Prayer of St. Augustine — Breathe in Me, O Holy Spirit
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) converted after years of restless searching, famously praying, "You have made us for yourself, and our…
- Prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas Before Study
St. Thomas Aquinas, the thirteenth-century Dominican who wrote the Summa Theologiae, prayed before every period of study and dictation,…
- Prayer of Thomas à Kempis
From the Imitation of Christ, written by Thomas à Kempis in the Netherlands around 1420 and, after the Bible, the most widely read…
- Psalm 25 — Unto Thee, O Lord, Do I Lift Up My Soul
An alphabetical psalm of penitence and guidance, asking God to show his ways and to remember mercy rather than the sins of youth. It is…
- Solomon's Prayer for Wisdom
Solomon's request at Gibeon (1 Kings 3:7–9), offered when God invited him to ask for anything. Because he asked for discernment rather than…
- The Chaplet of the Holy Spirit
The Chaplet of the Holy Spirit takes its shape from the two great outpourings recorded in Scripture and from the seven gifts named by the…