prayer
Another edition of Tuesdays, prayers from his book The Pursuit of God
They have profoundly impacted me and I hope they challenge and move you as you pray them too.
I prayed this one in tears:
Father, I want to know thee, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there.
In Jesus’ name. Amen
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prayer
For the next few Tuesdays, I want to share some of Tozer’s prayers from His book The Pursuit of God They have profoundly impacted me and I hope they challenge and move you as you pray them too.
Oh God, I have tasted thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. Oh God, the Triune God, I want to want thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know thee indeed. Begin in mercy, a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.
In Jesus’ name. Amen
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Christ Following, life
“I’m not worried about what I’ve done. It’s what I could have done that troubles me.” – A.W. Tozer
I’ll admit it. Between the ages of 15 and 30 I put off a lot of things. Somehow I thought, “I have a long time to accomplish that.” and that line of thinking brought on a certain passiveness that today I regret. Now, here I am, almost halfway through my life with such an urgency to do something great for God that it’s almost paralyzing. My greatest fear? That I’ll reach the end of my life having made little to no impact on the world around me; that somehow I will have missed it and I’ll be full of woulda shoulda couldas.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the 15+ years I’ve been in ministry. It’s just that somehow I believe that there’s something… more. More than Western church work. More than preaching, more than music, more than programs. I mean, if that was what we’re supposed to do, then why are so many going to hell? Why are there starving? Why are people still being sold as slaves? Why do 80% of young people leave the church? Why is the divorce rate just as high in the church as it is outside? Why are 1,500 pastors leaving the ministry every month?
I really do love the local church. I don’t know where I’d be without it. It’s through the local church that I found an awesome relationship with Jesus. That’s where I learned how to pray, found community, and received blessing after blessing from the Father. My question is, “What aren’t we doing?”
Notice, I didn’t ask, “What isn’t the church doing?” After all, WE are the local church. Remember when that missionary came and said he needed help in South Africa? Remember when the Holy Spirit pulled on your heart to go and you didn’t? Do you recall the many times you felt a tug to give to help those in need? You made a mental note to write a check when you got home, but the check was never written. How about that calling to work with the teenagers at your church, but life got in the way and you never got any further than just mentioning it to the youth pastor? I know I’ve been there. My whole family would have been to Africa, I would have had a book written, and thousands of my hard earned dollars would be poured into hundreds of projects by now if I would have just done what I’d meant to do. It’s too bad we don’t get points for good intentions.
Here are a few things we can all do to shorten our list of things we didn’t do:
Start writing down the things you felt you were supposed to do, then start doing them. Sounds overly simplistic, I know, but sometimes the mere act of writing a thing down gets it out of the realm of whims and into a greater sense of reality. Why not? We write down goals like the car we want to buy and the vacation we want to take. Why not write down the things we want to do for God? We’re always looking for God to tell us what to do. Maybe He’s been quiet because we haven’t done the last 20 things he told us to.
Tell somebody. Have someone in your life who will hold you accountable to your dreams. It’s too easy to blow things off when the emotion dies down and it’s all just a big idea rolling around in your head.
Take a small step. Put a couple dollars in an envelope marked “Missions Trip”, commit to serving at only one youth event, or pray five minutes a week for your pastor. Remember, a very small thing is better than no thing and you’ll be surprised at how several baby steps can add up quickly.
So how about you? What are some things you felt called to do but didn’t? What are the things you haven’t done? You can post some things here and have a bunch of people praying for you. Let a life of no regrets be your goal!
* My apologies to all those who commented on this post. I lost it during maintenance and had to repost it. Feel free to comment again!
Christ Following, life
Ever found yourself in a situation like this? You’re tempted. You want to look at that image, vent criticism, gossip, cross that line, bend the truth, or whatever it is your flesh wants to indulge in. But you hear the voice of the Holy Spirit saying, “Don’t go there!” Maybe you don’t hear a voice but you know it’s wrong. Right about then, that other voice kicks in saying, “He’ll forgive you.” Somewhere in the back of your mind you assure yourself of the mercy of God and it comforts you to know that He’ll still love and forgive you if you choose to do the wrong thing… and that comfort usually leads to the wrong decision.
I think sometimes when we struggle with a pattern of sin (secret or public) the answer can simply be found in how we view Jesus. If we stop at Savior, we’re missing so much of what He has for us. We have to accept and view Him as Lord, King, Giver of Life, Best Thing of All! When we approach him simply as a free ticket to heaven, mere fire insurance, we miss out. Plain and simple. He’s so much more and when we give Him Lordship, we receive that abundant life He spoke of. In the end, it’s not so much of a sin problem as it is a Lordship problem. Lordship leads to who and what we bend our lives around.
How do you view Jesus? A.W. Tozer once wrote “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” How you view Jesus will change how you live, where you live, and whether you truly live but you have to want more than simply a forgiveness dispenser.
“Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him.” – Philippians 3:8-9a
* My apologies to all those who commented on this post. I lost it during maintenance and had to repost it. Feel free to comment again!
