🧎🏻 A Trappist Monk's Prayer
There is a monastic order called the Trappists—a community of disciples who have taken a vow of silence, broken only when absolutely necessary, in pursuit of a deeper life with God.
One of their monks left behind a teaching on prayer that stops me cold every time I encounter it. Derek Prince quoted it often, and I understand why. Three simple intentions—three things to actively pray that you would desire:
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Pray that you would desire not to be esteemed. Not merely to avoid pride—that’s too easy, too passive. This is something harder: asking God to reshape your very wants, so that you genuinely stop craving the approval and admiration of others. Lord, may You alone receive the glory.
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Pray that you would desire not to be self-sufficient. Not just to acknowledge dependence on God in theory while quietly trusting in your own competence in practice. This prayer goes after the root: Lord, make me want to need You—always, in everything.
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Pray that you would desire not to be in control. This one cuts deepest for me. There is a particular anxiety that comes from feeling like your life is slipping out of your hands. This prayer doesn’t just ask God for peace in that anxiety—it asks Him to transform you so completely that you no longer feel compelled to hold the reins in the first place. My life belongs to God, not to me.
What strikes me about this teaching is where it places the target. It doesn’t say act as if you don’t need esteem, security, and control—it says pray to desire their absence. That’s a far more honest starting point. Most of us still want these things desperately. The Trappist isn’t pretending otherwise; he’s bringing that hunger to God and asking Him to change it.
These three prayers are, in my view, one of the most concise and searingly accurate diagnoses of the human ego ever written. We all want to be recognized. We all want to feel safe. We all want to be the ones steering. And the gospel calls us to die to all three—not through willpower, but through prayer.