Prayer for Protection

If you only have a moment, pray one line. Say it slowly and mean it. Then, when you have a minute more, pray the fuller prayer below it.

Psalm 91 is the passage many people mean when they ask for a protection prayer. It is a song of trust, sixteen verses long and full of pictures: a hiding place, a fortress, wings, a shield. And it begins with a place to live, not a list of promises. In this psalm, being protected starts with staying close to God.

Then come the big promises: no fear of “the terror by night” (Psalm 91:5, KJV), angels to keep you, a thousand falling at your side. Here it helps to be honest. Faithful Christians still get sick, still lose people they love, still die in accidents. Psalm 91 does not promise that nothing bad will ever touch you, and the Bible itself shows why.

When the devil tempted Jesus, he set Him on the highest point of the temple, quoted these two verses and dared Him to throw Himself down (Matthew 4:5-6). Jesus answered, “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matthew 4:7, KJV). Psalm 91 is a reason to trust God, not a dare to test Him.

Notice what God says near the end: “I will be with him in trouble” (Psalm 91:15, KJV). The psalm expects trouble to come. Its deepest promise is that God will be there in it and will carry His people through, in this life or the next. Nothing, Paul writes, can “separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39, KJV). That is the protection no one can take from you.

To pray Psalm 91, read it aloud, slowly, in the first person. To pray it over someone you love, put their name where the psalm says thee and him.

Psalm 121 is eight verses long, short enough to learn by heart. In the King James Version it is headed “A Song of degrees”, one of a run of psalms with that heading. It looks up at the hills and then past them, to the One who made them, and it ends with a promise that covers every hour: day and night, going out and coming in.

Keeping is the thread through the whole psalm. The LORD is “thy keeper” (Psalm 121:5, KJV), He never dozes off, and His care reaches your soul as well as your feet. Because it ends with your going out and your coming in, Psalm 121 is a natural prayer at the front door: before a trip, a first day at school or a night shift.

Name each person as you pray. God already knows them, but saying their names keeps the prayer honest and specific, and it reminds you how much you have been given.

Lock the door, test the smoke alarm, and pray. Psalm 127 puts both in their place: we keep watch, but God keeps the city.

Children leave our sight every day: at school, at practice, at a friend's house, and later in a car of their own. This prayer is for those hours. For babies, teenagers and grown children, see our prayers for children.

Pray it as you pull out of the driveway or as the plane taxis. Jacob heard this promise on the road, alone, with a stone for a pillow (Genesis 28:11-15).

Flying? Psalm 139 was written long before airplanes, but it fits: “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me” (Psalm 139:9-10, KJV).

Night is when fears get loud. David wrote Psalm 3 while he was running from his own son Absalom, and still he could say, “I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustained me” (Psalm 3:5, KJV).

If you like to fall asleep to Scripture, Faithero can read Psalm 91 or Psalm 121 aloud, verse by verse, in your iPhone's voices, with a sleep timer. For more prayers at the end of the day, see our evening and bedtime prayers.

The Bible is plain that not every danger is one you can see. Paul tells believers to stand firm in the armor God gives: truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation and the word of God. Our lesson on the armor of God walks through each piece. Jesus taught us to ask for this every day: “deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13, KJV).

And a promise to hold on to: “But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil” (2 Thessalonians 3:3, KJV).

For soldiers, police officers, firefighters, nurses and everyone whose work walks toward danger, and for the people who wait for them at home.

Christians have prayed this way for a very long time. One old Irish prayer, traditionally credited to St. Patrick, is known as his Breastplate, because it is meant to be put on like armor. These lines come from the English version by Cecil Frances Alexander (1889), known as the hymn “I bind unto myself today”: