There is only one

God that is all-powerful and all-knowing.  We acknowledge that only You know the depths of Truth and only You know the hearts of all men and women completely and without filter.  Father, Your plan from the beginning of time was to walk with us in the quiet of the garden, to know us fully.  Your desire to be our Father is so awesome and incomprehensible. You, the One who set the Milky Way up as one of a billion billion galaxies.  You, who created the delicate interrelationships of all living things, understanding how every neutron and atom and cell and structure needed to be.  It is You, THAT YOU, that wants to be our Father.  Thank you, Father in Heaven.

 

Father God, the world we find ourselves in has largely turned from You.  This world has failed to acknowledge who You are and received the truth that You are the Almighty God.  We have instead filled our existence with purposes and goals that are mere shadows and half-truths.  We have given our hearts not to worship and acknowledge You, but to pursue self-satisfaction and justification.  We strive for success and meaning and fulfilling our wants and desires largely leaving You, the Almighty God to get a little token of our time and attention on occasion, and even then, we do it selfishly.  Seemingly giving You - YOU, THE ONE WHO IS WORTHY TO RECEIVE ALL OF OUR ATTENTION AND PRAISE AND WORSHIP - giving You just a little slice of time, so that we might feel a dose of self-righteousness, or use that little smidgeon of time as a bargaining chip with You to expect more blessing, or protection, or healing, or a feeling of justification.  So Lord, even those of us who call You Lord, who can say we believe, can get stuck in the world's system.

 

Even those who call You "The Almighty One" many times do so with a transaction in the back of their mind.  We in the church today have sold our hearts to selfishness and many times can fall into the trap of thinking that You owe us if we only have enough faith, or deeds, or right thinking, or are aligned with the right people.  We have fallen into the never ending bottomless pit of chasing what we want and what we desire and our agendas all while using You as the vendor of blessing, or provision, or grace.  We have reduced Your Holy Scripture to mere recipe books of cooking up our blessing formulas and reduced it to being a simple guide book to getting what we want or desire.  In doing so, we've reduced You to a storekeeper, or a catalog that comes in the mail.

 

Father in Heaven - You are so much more than that, and for all of these things, and for all of our own and our world's sin, we ask for your mercy and forgiveness.  We repent of our misperceptions of who You are.  We repent of thinking that we are the ones who define You.  We repent of attempting to climb up to the judgement seat that only You can sit upon, and we ask for Your great mercy.  The wrong attitudes of our hearts and the wrong understandings and perceptions of You have caused us to create worlds that break people and do not bless them.  These attitudes and beliefs help to increase strife and pain and the using of one another.  It is for Your mercy that we ask.  Bring forgiveness to us, and don't count our sin against us, because we all deserve judgement.  Have mercy on us, Father, because we are a people of users…  users of You for whatever we think we need or want,  users of others to meet our needs and desires, and users of objects and things to fill the ache and emptiness our misdirected hearts have.

 

Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only righteous One, who is without beginning, and whom was there when the world was made, we acknowledge that You alone traversed the temptation to be self-focused.  You alone stood firm in the whispers of temptations that we so easily have fallen for. You are the only righteous One.  You made it through life without sin, You came as the embodiment of the new Adam.  Lord Jesus, you alone not only kept the law, but you kept the spirit of the law behind the letter of the law.  That is something not one of us can ever claim.  You alone!  Jesus, the selflessness of your life here on earth, your obedience to The Father, and your death and resurrection had only one logical outcome - your Glorification and ascension to Your rightful place as Lord of All.  The authority granted You is deserved.  Nothing is outside Your authority.  Nothing is beyond Your scope of rule and reign.  We are not serving or worshipping a limited savior that has limited authority and limited power.  No, not in any way! - You oh Lord, have been given all authority in Heaven and on Earth, and it is You, oh Lord that we follow.  Lead us, oh Lord!  Don't let us get away with running and ruining things in our own feebleness.  We are like government experts, preening and claiming, and posturing, all while knowing very little and thinking we have power and authority.  Help us to walk in the humility that comes when we know Who it is that we follow.  In our weakness, may the power of the Cross and the truth of the Good News be our strength and nothing else. 

 

Holy Spirit, Of all the members of the Godhead, You seem to be the most misunderstood and mistrusted and misperceived.  Holy Spirit, we can not even breathe without your presence.  We can not produce an iota of goodness that is everlasting without being grafted into the vine.  We must have You, the life of God, course through our veins and produce fruit from within us out for others.  Without you, we are simply disconnected from any source of life.  Come, Holy Spirit, and bring in our lives, the power to live and the fruit to share.  May the Kingdom of God go forth wherever we are, not because of our faithfulness, but because of Your faithfulness.  You bringing to us the presence of God is our greatest blessing.  You opening up truths to us from the Word is the only way we learn anything of value.  You bringing glory to the Father and to the Son, by living in and through us is why we were made.  Please, Spirit, don't let those who want to use you get away with it.  Don't let those who want to limit Your work get away with it.  Don't let those who misunderstand your work live in that misunderstanding.  Instead, Holy Spirit, You have Your way with us.  Lead us into truth, fill us with your fruit, and purge in us anything that is a hinderance to You. 

 

Our world, and our church has largely decided that You, oh God, have just left us here with a set of rules and contracts and frameworks.  The church has reduced you to a deity and has forgotten Your presence.  Lord, use whatever means necessary to break us all out of the ruts of 95% Worldly living with a 5% expression of following You.  If you need to bring calamity, that leads us to repentance, then bring it on.  If you need to show us the fiery consuming fire that will one day consume everything that is not of value, then show us that fire, oh God.  God, there is NOTHING that we give our lives to that is more important than You.  Nothing, Nothing, Nothing.  Don't let us go another season thinking that there are some decent things that should compete in our hearts with following You.  Take those away and keep us from leaning on temporary props and stands that are made of light wood.  No, Lord, don't let us stand on anything that will be shakeable.  Take those things from us and force us to stand only upon You, and the gloriousness of THE PLAN you have for each of us.  That we should acknowledge You as God the Father, Jesus and the Savior and Lord, and walk in the Spirit.  There is nothing else, HAVE YOUR WAY, oh Lord!  HAVE YOUR WAY.

 

May this prayer begin a fire within us, oh Lord.  May it burn away the chaff, and leave only the most important things.  May this fire burn and consume us in such a way that we bring Your warmth to those around us.  That we are part of providing light to those in the darkness, that we are part of undoing the work of the enemy here in our community.  May we all burn brightly, warmly, and clearly. 

 

Make this time in our lives, the time of the Lord that seemingly our past was not.  Make this time, the time that is marked by those around us saying "THAT - was when God moved!!!"   -  In Jesus' name   - Amen

 

 

Blessings to all who read this - share it with your friends, and pray it with your groups.  May our hearts all turn to the Lord, and acknowledge Him.

 

Norm Rasmussen