The Serenity Prayer has been used throughout the ages among a wide variety of help-based groups with good reason. It’s powerful! The Serenity Prayer is more than just a script and holds actionable steps for healing and growth beyond just being a plea to God for spiritual help. We’ll dig into each phrase of the Serenity Prayer here and see how we can mold our perspectives and actions to walk in a real sense of peace and calm.
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The Serenity Prayer
God, give me grace to accept the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things that can,
and the Wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
The version above is an adapted mesh between the Serenity Prayer commonly found online and what’s often spoken in public, which usually reduces the formality a bit.
The Serenity Prayer was first alluded to in 1932 by Reinhold Niebuhr.
Now, let’s dig into each piece of the prayer and see how we can better grasp the message.
God, give me grace to accept the things that cannot be changed…
The sooner each of us understands this reality the better.
Some doors in life are going to be closed.
Some opportunity in life will not come our way.
Some struggles, some difficulties, and some people we encounter are going to be the way they are and will continue to be that way long enough that we need to deal with it.
It’s common to fight against things we wish were different because we truly hope (and think) they can be changed.
So much time and energy is spent wasted with no benefit in sight.
But accepting that requires grace. It requires surrender. It requires letting go of thinking we have more power and control than God in our situations.
Courage to change the things that can…
It’s ironic, in a way, that immediately after we accept that some things simply cannot be changed, we then face the exhortation to have courage changing things that can.
We hate being flexible in situations, don’t we?
We just want to know if all the doors are closed or open.
We want a single response to all situations.
That’s not how the world works though. In the process of truly living, it takes action and thoughtfulness to determine if something can or cannot be changed.
And sometimes, maybe more often than not, things CAN be changed.
Those things that can be changed differ from person to person but my mind immediately goes to unhealthy habits.
We all have bad habits. Habits that may have resulted from hurts we’ve experienced or routines we’ve seen in our environment growing up.
Those habits can easily become hang ups, holding us back in life from good things.
Great things even.
Addictions are like that.
Bad influence people are like that.
For any of us to make a change in one of our habits it will take a great deal of courage.
Doing what’s right might come at the expense of saying no to ourselves, a friendship or significant relationship, or our status and reputation.
It’s hard to say no.
That’s why we need courage from God. It will take more than what we have naturally.
We need the supernatural.
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Wisdom is one of the most commonly misunderstood words in the English language.
Wisdom is often attributed to philosophers, monks, scientists, and professors.
Wisdom is typically associated with age and experience, the more you do and see the wiser you are.
The simple reality is that wisdom it the application of God’s truth.
Wisdom is not my truth or your truth.
And wisdom is not just knowledge of absolute truth.
Wisdom is the application (think action) of absolute truth (God’s truth).
Left to our own devices, we will all come to different conclusions on what can and cannot be changed in our lives.
We desperately need 1) to know God’s truth of what can and cannot be changed, and then 2) action to implement making the change or accepting it cannot be changed by us at this moment.
Living one day at a time,
Oh if we could grab hold of just this piece.
We are all so busy.
Too busy.
And the worst part is we all know it but don’t do much about it!
A life focused on every day but today is such a waste.
What’s happened in the past is past.
What has yet to happen hasn’t happened yet.
Living in the present moment is such a gift to our friends, loved ones, and even ourselves.
Living in the moment is less stressful and easier to manage.
All we have is today, and as the saying goes, today has enough trouble of its own.
Enjoying one moment at a time,
If we’re going to be somewhere, let’s be there!
Picture a couple at a nice dinner but both of them are staring at their phone.
They are not enjoying the one moment that have.
We all do it.
When we’re at work, let’s work!
When we’re at play, let’s play!
As author and speaker Jim Rohn liked to say, “When you’re at work, work, when you’re at play, pay, don’t mix the two!”
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
This is a challenging one.
But take heart in the following Bible verse:
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:3-5
Hardship is a pathway to peace as it forces us to confront truth of a situation and our response to it.
Will we accept God’s provision and control in our life or will we skirt the need for us to make decisive action and take responsibility for what we can control?
Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it,
Jesus didn’t pretend things were alright.
He didn’t fake it.
He wasn’t wishy-washy in the realities around him or in the lives of other people.
We must see and interact with the world as it really is…sinful, broken, marred, and in desperate need of salvation, joy, love, peace, forgiveness, and righteousness.
We can hold ourselves back by wishing things were different rather than making the most of what we have.
We are all very good at hosting pitty-parties.
But that’s not way to create a joyful life because joy isn’t dependent on external happiness.
Joy is an intentional perspective despite circumstances.
Trusting you will make all things right, if I surrender to Your will,
Did you know God’s in control and is constantly at work in and through our situations?
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28
Let me give you a short cut on this one.
God’s will is going to be done, whether we surrender to it or not.
And as the saying goes, we can make it easy or hard for ourselves.
Through surrender to God’s will, we find peace in situations that are not favorable.
Through trusting God, we let go of control that we never had in the first place.
And if we follow God’s leading, scripture says it will ultimately work out for good.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11
God’s got good things in store for us.
Let’s be patient, trusting, and courageous.
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with You in the next.
It’s OK for us to want to be happy.
Wanting things to go right is not wicked or wrong.
But the distinction here is reasonably happy.
And reasonably happy really refers to gratitude.
We are to be thankful and grateful for what we have in this life.
Reasonably happy means we appreciate that old, used car that gets us where we need to go.
Reasonably happy means while we don’t have luxurious food in our pantry we do have food and our hunger can be satisfied.
Reasonably happy means while we have not achieved all that we hope for, we have made and experienced some progress in the right direction that we can be proud of.
Reasonably happy means we don’t expect other people to hold our baggage and appreciate anything they do that helps us.
Reasonable happy means we know there is a higher level of happiness waiting for us in Heaven.
And we have hope that one day, we will experience what supreme happiness really is, and it won’t be because of having stuff or being successful or achieving goals.
Supreme happiness is all about the deepness of our relationship with God.
It stands to reason then, that reasonable happiness should also involve our relationship with other people on Earth, that deeper, more meaningful and healthy relationships is a pathway to happiness.
Amen.
Do you know what amen really means?
It means “let it be done.”
It’s a way of saying, “All that we prayed we want to come true in our life.”
And I think all of us can give a resounding AMEN to the Serenity Prayer!
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