If we really want to honor God, we will also thank him with all our hearts when his just and holy judgment has to humble us and make us small. We will never stand before God demanding, seeking to be justified, or in selfconfidence. When we recognize how weak we are and that God loves us and accepts us in our smallness, only the humil ity of gratitude and worship gives us the courage to speak to God. In fact, we can only pray when we are so keenly aware of our own limitations that it is clear to us that we can do nothing without the power of God’s love. We pray to confess our inadequacy, to admit that God’s kingdom is not here, but that we need it and want it to come. We approach God with empty hands. We raise them up and open to him, and kneel before him to express our smallness and emptiness. Only through faith in God can his will be fulfilled in our lives. With ev erything we do, we thank God for giving us a faith that leads to action. Our gratitude is born of our recognition that we are unworthy of God’s care and his generous gifts. It is only through grace that we can do the works of God. Our faith in the unmerited generosity of God fills us with love, with its insis tence on action. When this happens, we come to know what an inexhaustible wealth of grace awaits all those who call on the Lord for power and new life (Ps.86:5; Rom.10:12). We know that this is a power we can never attain on our own. This drives us to pray.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 20:16:09 +0000
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