PRAYING

… with single-hearted devotion!

Repent, turn away from your idols, and turn your faces away from all your abominations (Ezekiel 14:6).

Dear God, we don’t see ourselves as idolatrous! We don’t bow before images. But we do defer to and empower ugly little things in our lives – the unforgiveness, the angry grudge, the hurts and slights, the disappointments, the rejections. All are idols to self. We spend far too much time meditating on these hideous images. Some of us have equally unacceptable cryptograms etched on the walls of our hearts, tributes to us. They were our moments of glory in our hour of fame. Acknowledging them is not wrong. But organizing our lives around such trophies is an error. Humility demands our authenticity. You don’t want to decimate us. You want to exalt us. But You are the only stable thing that we can lay hold of to endure the coming shaking of this world. Before no one else do we need to be so transparent. But before You we must be brutally honest. Only then can we be authentically free and clean. We renounce the dependence on self, on either things positive and negative, the wounds or the strokes of this world. We throw ourselves into Your hands, such as we are! Heal us. Free us from the fear of man. May our only fear be that of alack of respect for Your holiness. We seek Your approval. And that is found only under the cover of the blood of the Lamb. Such an entrance is gained again, we remind ourselves, by authentic repentance. We repent. Amen.