Genuine: Like My Father

Father, trash the stuff in me that is unlike You.  The attitudes, the mindsets, the reactions, the ways of seeing things; take what is foreign to Your blood and send it away.

I still find these annoying little things that creep up – or sometimes they pop up like fireworks – that create more havoc for me than good.  I’m done with them!  I don’t want to be satisfied with less when You are more.  I don’t want to sate myself with soft platitudes when in fact You are able to do far more than I can even imagine.  I don’t want to make excuses for my nature when in fact my relationship with You is largely predicated on my understanding of the supernatural.  You are more, You are able, You are a mighty God.  If you can hold the entire universe together…  in Your hand no less…  if Your words can move planets and shape color systems, than I can be sure You can shape me.  You can hold me together.

So I pray that Your righteousness will be my prime mover today.  I submit to Your Holy counsel and cleansing knowing that I don’t need filters for my mouth, I need heart-level change.  I don’t want to be a man of political gamesmanship or street-level war-making, I want to be genuine.  You are the real thing, You are in me, and I want that genuineness to saturate my being.

Take this fast beating heart, comfort this knotted, ill-at-ease stomach, and bring on the flood of righteousness that only Your Holy Spirit can ignite in me.

By faith I have given You Lordship over me.  By faith, I will walk in Your ways, seeking Your understanding, knowing Your will by the counsel of Your Holy Spirit.

Let Your mercy prevail in me.  Let it be so.  Let Your glory rise, my Lord, let it rise today!

Fresh Rising Hope

I can’t run, I can’t hide from Your presence.  Your fresh falling mercies await me at the start of the day.  Even when I walk through the dark places, I will not fear, I will  not cry.  You are mine, I am Yours – this life if full of promise and hope.

I trust You, my hope is in You alone.

Worthy is the One who stands above the ages, whose victory is already won.

Name above all, priceless pearl, greatest treasure.

Jesus, how I love You, how I adore You.

Make me today the kind of man that loves beyond any qualification or justification.  Give me a generous helping of that unprecedented, supernatural love that sees sin like You do through the filter of Jesus.  Make my concern not the measure of quality in the person, but the measure of how much You love them in the first place.  Give me strength to do this, it’s not in me without You.

Let Your glory rise, let it rise in me today.

How I Found the Strength to Do This Day

Father, as I find my way to being quiet and worshipful before You, it occurs to me that you preceded me here and will be here long after I’m gone.  I realize Your presence remains with me, in me, and around me…  but I’m thinking more of the fact that You made these times for me to be quiet before You, and yet I sometimes approach them as if I’m making them.  I guess this is sort of the “making time to do what I must do” syndrome.  Instead, I will insist that today my brain recognizes that this was never about me or my time, but it’s always about You and Your centrality to who I am.

I feel like I’m lecturing you a bit here in this prayer journal entry, but thank You for helping me to sort out these important truths nonetheless.  I cry out to You for Your renewal, the inspiration that only Your hope can bring.

Just as I stir my morning’s big cup of coffee, I desire to be sweetened and stirred by Your presence.

Take from me the anger that cripples my emotions.

Take from me the bitterness that keeps me from tasting the sweetness of truth.

Take from me the rage of injustices done against me and replace it with the wonder of grace.

Take from me the lack of attention to Your voice and fill it with the beauty of Your song.

Take from me the inattentiveness to the crucial and transformational and give me real focus on what is good, right, pure, honest…

Give me the strength to do this day.  Give me the direction and counsel I need so that I may do it in Your Name.

Give me wholeness in relationships and healthy attitudes in communication.

All for You, Jesus…  let Your glory rise afresh in us today!  Yes!

A Daily Recognition of an Unstoppable Yes

Lost in the waves of opinion and graceless talk, I find myself leaning hard into You this morning, my Lord.

Stranded in fields of needless controversies and unrighteous indignations, I seek Your path – I covet Your counsel.

Father, I can’t imagine how You process the divisiveness and ingrained hurtfulness of those of us landlocked by earth and bound by flesh.

It’s Your daily deliverance in the form of new fallen fresh mercies that I crave for my soul’s renewal.  I only know what is right by seeing You first.  I only know what to tolerate by setting my tolerances to Your heart.  I only know what to say by listening first to Your Word and Your words.  I only know how to live in health by allow You to be my physician.

How can I please others?  That proposition seems, at best, win-some-lose-some. How then, can I bring joy and glory to Your heart today?  My highest satisfaction comes from a sacrifice with an aroma pleasing to You.

May Your compassions and passions be mine.  Great and awesome God – above all things, creator of such beauty, giver of life – I celebrate You, lifting high hands of praise.  All glory and honor to You, my King.

Recenter my heart.  Recalibrate my senses.  I’ve hit a few bumps in the road, and they seem to have left me a bit skewed.  Center me again in You so that I may know the fullest life.  Breathe through me here in this moment so that I may know Your life and freedom.  Thank You that I don’t need do-overs or restarts…  just daily yeses and daily “let-it-be-so’s”.

Let Your glory rise…  fresh and new and wonderful in scope.  Measureless, timeless, priceless…  let it rise in this community today, let it rise in this nation, let it rise in this planet.  All to You!

Great Expectations Fulfilled

Father, let this be the day of great expectations fulfilled!

What things do You need for me to add to my day to allow hope and promise to arise in someone’s heart?

What thing must I let go of in order to grab hold of the better engagement You have for me?

What person have I shut out that I need to give time and attention?

What mistakes about my own identity have I clung to that have prevented me from identifying with You?

What load of garbage am I carrying around that I need to drop off at the dumpster?

I seek, I listen, I ask, I knock on the door for Your much appreciated counsel.

I listen to the song You sing over me as I wait here in the quiet for Your glory to rise…

The Song That Lives In My Heart

Wow!  What a fragrant, affirming pleasure it is to walk through fields of fresh mercies to this place of quiet rest.

All my burdens, all my struggle, all the heavy places and the dark twists of the mind come to resolution in You.  I cannot carry this weight, but You can.  I cannot bury this dead stuff, but You can.  I cannot hope outside of You and the promise I find in Your truth.

So I listen, I wait, I steady myself at Your side.

Blessings, ten thousand and more, I find here in You.  My eyes open to this wow factor that flows from Your presence.  How can I live without Your song alive in my heart?

Maybe these notes of praise have become cliche to some ears, but they are fresh in me this morning.  Wash away all the staleness, bring Your living color to the pallid gray that lingers around me.  Season this day with the lively, fresh tastes of Your goodness and rightness; teach me to cook with those seasonings so others can taste it as well.

Make me a hope-builder, and a mercy-giver.  Everyday You reveal more of Your mystery; help me to learn, grow and increase in the wisdom that knowing You brings.

Today is the day.  It’s Your day.  It’s a day of new life and hope.  This song is alive in me – let it rise, let Your glory rise.

Out of Arrogance and Rage, Into Life

Have Your way and sway over me, through me, in me, Holy Spirit!

I am glad, and I am proud to be reconciled to Your better way – the way that restores and builds and makes right.

Forgive me for any time I’ve been arrogant with this pride-busting Good News of Yours.  Send me now so that I can fulfill the call to mercy, love and life.

Teach me to teach well.  When the moments come for me to give instruction to ready ears, use me as Your instrument.  Prepare me, equip me now for this sacred role.  Fill me full of Your Spirit so that none of me shows up in that moment.  All You, all the time!  That’s what I need!

In the same breath I must pray that I will never be moved to thinking I speak for You or that all my words are God-ordained!  Rather, I humble myself before You that all the pride and self-focus of my ways are burnt away, the wound cauterized by Your touch, and that I may be full of Your compassion and grace and truth and life.  Not ever, not ever, not ever to any glory of mine.  All to You, all You, all the time!

Let Your glory rise in me so that others may see what You can do with someone so contemptible and I am.  Let the anger and rage and bitterness and slander and despair and vengefulness of my old self be overcome by the transforming of my mind.  Though the present shows Your hope, I am glad to let the rewind reveal what this hope did for me.

Speak peace to me, and through me.  Speak life, speak powerfully.

All to You, Jesus, all for Your glory…  which IS on the rise!

Things I Hear in the Silence

I can only  bathe myself in the simple richness of the pleasure of knowing You this morning, my Lord.

All I am I gladly give to You, all I think I have is really Yours, all I desire for tomorrow is You.

In silence I hear Your peace.

In this quietness I sense Your goodness.

In this early hour, Your gentleness explodes, Your mercies rain down.

Glory to You, my King.  All praise and honor to the One who is beginning and end and all points between.

Out of the rush of sickness and distress, You are the hope that speeds past expectation.

In the midst of question and turmoil, You are the marker that guides me to rest.

When the battle rages, You are my strength and passion.

Let this be the story of my day: that Your glory has risen and it has risen in me, an extraordinary testimony to Your greatness and power.

The Joy of a Strange, Wonderful Journey

What a joy.

This strange, wonderful, exceptional, under-rated privilege of dining at the table of prayer with You is changing me.  I’m so thankful for this change.

Out of the darkness of despair, into the daily fresh light of knowing You.  I’m so thankful for this journey.

Out of my endless rambling and dodging and sniping, into the focus and centrality of holding tight to You.  I’m so thankful for this welcoming-in.

Out of the need to propagate my own whims and peculiarities, into the uniqueness of being just what You made me to be.  I’m so thankful for my identity in You.

So here in my joy I feel especially free to lay out before You these things that burden my heart today.  I pour out my questions and concerns.  I deal with my difficulties.  And I listen.

What a joy, what a joy to know You this way, my Lord and Savior.  What a blast of Heaven overtaking the infringement of Hell.  What a peace to be in the presence of the One who not only answers, but provides, equips, and unites with those who seek You.  I look forward to our walk together today, my friend.

Let’s get this glory on the rise!  Stir me, shake me, set me into motion.  Let it rise, let the journey continue…

 

An Exercise In Letting Go and Taking Hold

How can a first-thing-in-the-morning prayer be so tied up by a bundle of nervous energy?

I realize, in a brutally honest sort of way, as I’ve come here to pray I’ve failed to lay it all down.  I seem to be holding on to the very things that I believe have a hold on me.  Help me now to be fully invested in You, God, which means giving You everything.  I sense You don’t mind in the least bit if I cast all the negatives before You right along beside all the good words of praise.

I’ve heard and read so many commentaries about how we should and shouldn’t pray.  Still, I seem to come back to Your Word which reminds me to tell you what I want, then give praise for who You are.  Why do I stumble so much on this thinking that it’s un-spiritual (or some similar thing) to be gritty honest in all that I lay out before You.  Even if I’m struggling with a want that’s not good for me, why not just lay it out before You and allow You to speak into it?  Even if I’m struggling with things that others tell me I should be well past by now in my journey, why I can’t I trust You with them anyway?  Why do I think these very advisors are being all that honest with themselves about things they’re not past yet, either?!

So here it is –

All of today’s worries, I lay them down.  The work that lies before me is Yours anyway, so why worry, right?

All of these health issues, mine and my wife’s, I lay them down.  I’ve learned well that this is a topic where there is much disagreement among us frail people.  I’m not going to concern myself today with the words of man on this healing matter.  It’s You alone that is my concern and my passion.  Here is all the garbage – all the stuff – I lay it all down.

All of the rabbit trails and diversions and distractions and complications – all of ’em – I lay them down.  I so thoroughly want to commit them all to You that even their dust cannot be found on my hands.

All of the negative baloney that the enemy would have me believe – I lay it all down.  Tired of that liar having such domination of my attention span.  I want You alone, my Lord.  I listen for You.

And that’s probably just the segue I need to transition from journaling to listening and worship.  So thanks for helping me get focused today – and let Your glory rise, my King!  Yes, let it rise in me today!