Four Prayers From A Course in Miracles You Can Use Today
A Course in Miracles does not give a single official prayer. It gives short lines of practice, mostly in the Workbook, that students use as prayers. Four that I return to again and again are Lesson 365 (“This holy instant would I give to You”), Lesson 232 (“Be in my mind, my Father, through the day”), Lesson 189 (“I feel the Love of God within me now”), and Lesson 153 (“In my defenselessness my safety lies”). Each one is one sentence long. That is the point. You are meant to be able to remember it in traffic.
I have been teaching A Course in Miracles for years, and the question I get most often is some version of “what do I actually say?” People come to prayer expecting a paragraph. The Course hands them a line. It took me a long time to understand that the shortness is the gift, not a shortcut.
Key Takeaways
- A Course in Miracles has no single set prayer. The Workbook lesson titles function as its prayers.
- Prayer in the Course is a shift in perception from fear to love, not a request for things to change.
- Four practical lines: Lesson 365, Lesson 232, Lesson 189, Lesson 153.
- The Course also has a supplement devoted to the subject, The Song of Prayer, published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.
- Each prayer is short on purpose, so it can be recalled in the exact moment you lose your peace.
What Prayer Means in A Course in Miracles
This is where most people trip, so I want to be direct about it. In the Course, prayer is not a way of asking God to rearrange your circumstances. It is a way of changing your mind about your circumstances. A miracle, in the Course’s own vocabulary, is a shift in perception from fear to love. Prayer is how you invite that shift.
That reframe matters practically. If I pray for my problem to go away and it does not go away, I conclude prayer failed. If I pray to see my problem differently, I get an answer every single time, because that answer does not depend on anything outside my own mind changing first.
Lesson 189 puts my job plainly: “Your part is simply to allow all obstacles that you have interposed between the Son and God the Father to be quietly removed forever.” Notice the verb. Allow. Not build, not earn, not perform. The same lesson adds a line I think about constantly: “You will look upon that which you feel within.”
So prayer, as I practice it, is less like petitioning and more like opening a door I had been holding shut.
Prayer 1: “This holy instant would I give to You”
The full line from Workbook Lesson 365 reads: “This holy instant would I give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, Certain that Your direction gives me peace.”
This is the last lesson of the Workbook year, and it is the one I use when I am trying to control an outcome. Four words carry it: Be You in charge. Trying to run things on my own is the problem. Letting the Holy Spirit run them is the answer. I say it when I am about to send a hard email, before a difficult conversation, and roughly nine times a day in Miami traffic.
What I like about it is that it does not require me to feel spiritual. It requires me to stop steering for one instant. The Epilogue to the Workbook makes the same promise: “Whatever troubles you, be certain that He has the answer, and will gladly give it to you, if you simply turn to Him and ask it of Him.”
Prayer 2: “Be in my mind, my Father, through the day”
Workbook Lesson 232. I use this one first thing in the morning, before my feet hit the floor.
Many of us were handed an image of God who keeps a list and checks it twice. I certainly was. I grew up seeing “God is Love” in gold letters at the front of a church while privately suspecting God was also keeping score. This prayer is the correction to that. It asks for presence, not verdict. There is not a hint of condemnation in it.
Practically, it sets the frame for the whole day rather than for one crisis. It also pairs with a line from the same lesson that I lean on hard: “Trust all things to Him. Let Him reveal all things to you.” When something dismays me, there is only one thing to do, and it is to hand it over.
Prayer 3: “I feel the Love of God within me now”
Workbook Lesson 189. This is the prayer for the days when you feel nothing.
The word doing the work is now. The Love of God is not scheduled to arrive once I have cleaned myself up. It is already here, and my only task is removing what I stacked in front of it. When I say this line and feel nothing, I have learned not to treat that as failure. Feeling nothing usually means I am still holding onto the ego’s priorities with both hands, and the line is exactly the tool for loosening the grip.
Pathways of Light, the ACIM ministry where I did my own training, offers a longer prayer alongside this lesson that begins “Dear God, I have joined with the values of separation, and now I choose to return to the awareness of Your ever-present Love.” I use the long version when I have five quiet minutes and the short version when I do not.
Prayer 4: “In my defenselessness my safety lies”
Workbook Lesson 153, and the hardest of the four.
The ego confuses weakness with strength and strength with weakness. So this prayer asks the opposite of what instinct demands. When someone says something that stings and my whole body wants to argue, this is the line. Defensiveness, the lesson teaches, is a signal, and what it signals is fear.
The related prayer I actually speak out loud on those days is simple: Holy Spirit, help me to see Love everywhere today, that I may know my strength and see that same strength in everyone. Nothing needs defending that cannot be changed, and what I truly am cannot be changed.
How I Actually Pray These
Here is the practice, stripped down.
- Pick one, not four. Running through a list is performance. One line, all day, does more.
- Say it before you need it. Morning, before the day has an opinion about you.
- Use it as an interrupt. The moment you notice you have lost your peace, say the line instead of continuing the thought. That is the whole method.
- Do not grade the result. If you feel calm, good. If you feel nothing, you still practiced. The Course asks for willingness, not results.
- Repeat past the point of boredom. Boredom is usually where the ego gets quiet enough for something else to be heard.
The Course also devotes an entire supplement to this subject, The Song of Prayer, published by the Foundation for Inner Peace. If the four lines above open something in you, that supplement is where to go next.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there an official prayer in A Course in Miracles?
No. A Course in Miracles does not contain one designated prayer the way some traditions do. Students most often use Workbook lesson titles as prayers, along with passages from the Text and from the supplement The Song of Prayer.
What is the most well known prayer from A Course in Miracles?
Workbook Lesson 365 is among the most widely used: “This holy instant would I give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, Certain that Your direction gives me peace.” It closes the Workbook’s year of practice.
Does A Course in Miracles teach you to pray for specific things?
Not in the usual sense. The Course treats prayer as a means of changing your own perception rather than changing external events. The shift from fear to love is what it calls the miracle, and that shift is what prayer asks for.
Can I pray these if I am not a Christian?
Yes. The Course uses Christian vocabulary, but its terms carry its own meanings. “Holy Spirit” in the Course refers to the inner Guide, the Voice for God within your own mind. Students come from every background and none.
How long should I pray for?
Short and often beats long and rare. These lines are built to be said in a few seconds, many times a day, which is exactly how the Workbook structures its own practice periods.
What if I do not feel anything when I pray?
That is normal and it is not a failure. Lesson 189 teaches that your part is only to allow the obstacles to be removed, not to produce a feeling. Willingness is the requirement.
Sources
- Pathways of Light, ACIM Workbook Lesson 365 Insights
- Pathways of Light, ACIM Workbook Lesson 232 Insights
- Pathways of Light, ACIM Workbook Lesson 189 Insights
- Pathways of Light, ACIM Workbook Lesson 153 Insights
Keep Going
If you want the bigger picture behind these prayers, start with my chapter by chapter summary of A Course in Miracles. For more of the language itself, here are the best A Course in Miracles quotes. And if you have been wondering how the Course relates to non-dual teaching, I wrote about A Course in Miracles vs non duality.
