A Simple Prayer

Heavenly Father, if I understand your Book correctly...

You know me.

You know everything about me...each of my thoughts, the deepest desires and intents of my life, actions I have taken, and actions I will take...I am completely transparent to you. But, you are perfectly holy and pure. It must be awfully frustrating to look at all there is to see in me...compared to you, I must look like a smelly mud puddle. I am sorry for that because the mud in which I played separates me from you.

Yet, you love me...despite what you know.

I find that so puzzling...that you determine to love me when I think and act in ways so contrary to your clearly expressed directions. And, the love you invest in me is so pervasive that I cannot be good enough to earn it or bad enough to cancel it. You love me so much that you divested yourself of all your purity and stepped into the mud to guide me out and clean me up. The really strange thing is that even as I enjoy being clean, fresh, at peace, productive, and effective, I go back to the mud...and you come get me again and again.

Because you have a plan for me.

A custom-designed plan just for me. Most of it is clearly presented in the Book you provided to me. So, my responsibility is to read, reflect upon, and act upon instruction which you have already provided. It's all there...how to be a husband, father, grandfather, employer, employee, friend, citizen. I am puzzled again...knowing all this, why do I neglect it?

But, there are parts of your plan so uniquely designed for me that you interpret them through your Book directly to my thought. Your plan...a little at a time, is planted in me as something I recognize as a desire. You add pieces according to your purpose and in your time and always consistent with what you have already said in the Book. Ultimately, your plan, planted by you as desire in me, matures into a clearly defined assignment for action.

A big part of me wants that assignment and all to which it will lead. But, there is a part of me which fears, not the work, but the prospect of letting you down. I take comfort from something I read in your Book...

"Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do. This is my command- be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:8-9