As a Christian university, ACU Online is strongly focused on enhancing and championing each student’s vocational formation and calling on their lives. Looking for ways to engage with each student’s learning of how God is shaping them into the person they were born to be, ACU Online has taken great steps to provide avenues for spiritual formation and well-being. Throughout our curriculum and offerings, students are encouraged to dive deeper into their personal relationships with God and become integral parts of the body of Christ through their classes, work settings, and family commitments both large and small. At ACU Online, we believe the work you do matters, and that this world is a better place because of it. Placing a focus on nurturing practices and postures that help you continually attend to your own spiritual life, ACU is constantly looking for ways to launch you toward a deeper understanding of God’s power, authority, and grace over your life. 

As the new school year approaches, here are a few mindful prayers for those seeking time to meditate and sit with the Lord during this time of transition and change. Whether you’re someone who needs a prayer to start your day, looking for a prayer for a particular season, or needing a small reminder of God’s abounding love and pursuit of you, we hope these prayers remind you of His faithfulness and our mission to bring you closer to Him. 

Prayer for Perseverance 

Tim Keller 

Lord, all day may you give me an awareness of your presence, fruitfulness yet patience with your appointments, wisdom and compassion in my dealings, and Fatherly protection against dangers and adversities. Let me accept whatever degree of success or difficulty in my work you give me this day, and especially make me compassionate and ready to be interrupted in order to do good to others. In Jesus’s name.

Prayer for Those in Fear 

Psalm 121:5-8

Lord, You watch over me—You are the shade at my right hand; the sun will not harm me by day,

nor the moon by night. You will keep me from all harm—You will watch over my life; You will watch over my coming and going both now and forevermore. 

Prayer for Peace 

St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love, Where there is injury, pardon, Where there is doubt, faith, Where there is despair, hope, Where there is darkness, light, Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, not so much to be understood as to understand, not so much to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in dying that we awake to eternal life.

Prayer for Receiving Grace

John Wesley

O God, seeing as there is in Christ Jesus an infinite fullness of all that we can want or desire, May we all receive from him, grace upon grace; grace to pardon our sins, and subdue our iniquities; to justify our persons and to sanctify our souls; and to complete that holy change, that renewal of our hearts, Which will enable us to be transformed into the blessed image in which you created us. O make us all acceptable to be partakers of the inheritance of your saints in light. Amen.

Prayer for Unity 

Martin Luther King Jr. 

O God, we thank Thee for Thy Church, founded upon Thy Word, that challenges us to do more than sing and pray, but go out and work as though the very answer to our prayers depended on us and not upon Thee… Help us to realize that man was created to shine like the stars and live on through all eternity. Keep us, we pray, in perfect peace, help us to walk together, pray together, sing together, and live together until that day when all God’s children, Black, White, Red, and Yellow, will rejoice in one common band of humanity in the kingdom of our Lord and of our God, we pray. Amen.

Prayer for Increasing Strength and Fullness

Ephesians 3:14–21 

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant [me] to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in [our] inner being, so that Christ may dwell in [my] heart through faith—that [I], being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that [I] may be filled with all the fullness of God. 

We hope these prayers assist you in the next phase of your educational journey. If you need prayer or would like to know more about our Christian focus, visit our website and learn more about our Vocational Formation office and dean of vocational formation.