A desperate prayer

(Author's note: What follows is simply a compilation of various prayers that I have offered to God this week. My goal is not to engender your pity or your sympathy or even your empathy. Instead, my hope is that we can all be real with God and abandon ourselves in our desperate need of Him)

Father, Abba, Daddy,

Why do I so often come to you wearing a mask? You know all things. You've created all things. You control all things. You know me. You've created me. You are sovereignly at work in my life. Who do I think I am to try to hide from you or pretend that I am someone other than who I am? Perhaps this is just another reminder of how deep my rebellion and arrogance go. And it reveals how desperately bankrupt I am.

But, I need to thank you for the infinite grace and mercy that you have shown me in Christ. I am only now, 20 years into this journey with you, beginning to realize the immensity of the ocean of the love of Christ. I am incredibly grateful for all that Christ has accomplished on the Cross and that you have applied his finished work to my traitorous, treacherous life. And yet I am still standing on the shore holding all I know about you and your Son and the Spirit in a thimble. I desperately need to dive into the ocean of your grace and majesty, power and holiness. I desperately need to drink deeply from your fountain of patience, humility, compassion and forgiveness.

As I consider Christ's promise on your behalf that you would give good things to your children, I want so much to ask and seek and knock in childlike faith not childish pride or selfishness. I regret that too many of my prayers are one dimensional and treat you as a genie or a vending machine and have a view that this life is our ultimate objective. Forgive me, please. How often do I forget Jesus' very words "Your Father knows that we need them all (life's necessities). But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added onto you"?

So here I am, open and exposed. The more I look at myself, the more I see leprosy and gangrene, rotting teeth and cancer to the bone. There is nothing I have to offer you and nothing I can do on your behalf without you. Quite frankly, I'm desperate. If you will, take this rebellious, traitorous, willful, arrogant coward and use him in a way that brings you the most glory and impacts Christ's kingdom in a way that only you can. And empower me to turn any success or setback into an opportunity for your praise and testimony of your great grace and mercy and love and power. Please take my values, my priorities, everything that drives me and reorient them in way that is radically aligned with your values, priorities and what drove (and drives) Christ.

I can only lay this before your throne humbly and with tears because of and through and in alignment with your Son, my savior, Jesus.  Amen.

To God Alone be the Glory