The Prayer

 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing." Matthew 23:37

In the midst of using my prayer journal today, I came upon this prayer that I wrote down some years ago. I don't remember the source of it, but I can never read it or pray it without being convicted of how far I still am from fully living it out. Even so, it is something I pray will become my life. Would you dare to pray with me?

"May I see this dying world with His heavy heart." When Jesus looked down upon the city of Jerusalem, He did so with a broken heart. The very city, people, and nation to which He'd been sent had rejected His offer of life and freedom. They chose death and darkness. How do we look upon a culture that is equally ignorant or rebellious towards His message of life? Does our heart break over the state and the fate of all those who choose against Him? Do we live with heavy hearts about it all, or are we far more concerned with our personal comfort, and that we receive all of His blessing that we can?

"That I would hurt wherever He hurts and love everywhere He loves." This was simply the way Christ lived. Wherever He was, He was deeply affected by the condition of those He had come for. He not only saw their pain, He felt it, shared in it. He longed to heal it. As He hurt for and with them, He also loved them. Even those who rejected Him, hated Him, and sought to kill Him. What are our lives like in comparison? Do we hurt along with those we see hurting around us? Do we love them as He does? Or, do we seek the safety of our church fellowships, trying our best to keep the fallen world around us out? Jesus ran to those who were wounded and broken, coming alongside them. Do we do the same, or do we run away?

"That all of my being will be an instrument of His love, power, and authority." Are we so focused upon Him that all of our energies are directed upon displaying not only His love, but His power and authority over a fallen world and the devil who operates in it? Do we seek to be vessels of His life, His healing, His deliverance? Do we believe that we have at our disposal His power and His authority? Do we know that we can not only love those He has placed around us, but that we can display that love for them through the use of His power and authority over that which holds them captive? Or, do we live as though we're helpless against the darkness and death of this fallen world?

"That I will love and minister where He loves and ministers." Jesus did this wherever He was. He journeyed everywhere in His earthly ministry, and He ministered all along the way of every journey. There was not any place where He ceased to be the Messiah, the Savior. Is this our lifestyle? If we are His, then we are to live out His life in every place we find ourselves. We are to  offer His life in every place He puts us. If we are His, there is no place we will find ourselves in by accident. He has us there for a reason, and the reason is to be vessels of His life, love, and authority there. Does this describe the way we currently live? Or do we choose when and where we will be so, based on whether it is convenient for us to be so or not?

"Last, will I drink the cup, no matter what it holds, that He offers me?" The brothers James and John asked Jesus if they could sit at his right and left hand in eternity. He asked them if they could drink the cup, take on the life that His Father had called Him to, as He had. Can we? Can we no matter what that cup holds? Are we so dedicated and surrendered to Him that we will take that cup, drink that cup, no matter the pain, adversity, and sacrifice it may contain? Many of us, like James and John, dream greatly of doing great things and being great in the Kingdom of God. How many of us have taking His cup of suffering as being part of that dream? Are we willing to drink of His cup regardless of what it contains, and all because He offers it, and that the drinking of it will be for His glory, even if no one else knows or sees?

That's the prayer. Can we pray it? Can we live it out? Or do we sidestep it?

Blessings,
Pastor O