Can I share a prayer that came my way?
It is really sums up what God has been speaking to my heart:
Your People
Oh, Lord we are your people.
We do not yet begin to fathom our desperate need of You;
for indeed until we are free, we are helpless to realize the depth of our bondage.
We come before You in confession this day.
We confess to You that we have not misunderstood Your command to love one another.
We confess to a willful disobedience and to an inner slothfulness that sees a true heart change as simply too much trouble.
We confess that we have reduced Your "new commandment" to a "new consideration".
A warm and fuzzy - though highly unattainable - fairy tale.
Our hearts are held fast in the vice grip of self-centeredness.
We confess to You this day, Lord: our love is small.
Our hearts are not dwarfed by the evil one; rather by our own fists.
We have stomped our feet before You as spoiled children crying, "mine!"
We confess the sin of our preference for a privy few.
And we confess that we have not cheated others of our love nearly as much as we have cheated ourselves of the priveledge to love them.
Finally, Lord, we confess our unbelief.
We do not believe You are greater than our hearts.
Holy Father, some of us today, with fear and an inner war of selfishness raging, are willing to hold out our fists to You.
Tucked pitifully within You will find our small hearts.
If we will but choose to take the fisted hand we hide behind our back and extend it to You, You will graciously peel away each finger until we are released.
Oh come, Glorious Liberty!
Free us to love as we have been loved, for only then will we truly live.
Surround me with those so different from me.
Let me not continue on in the gripping constraint of self-centeredness.
Take my crumpled heart and inflate it until it begs to burst with the warm blood of Your Son.
I choose this day to love.
Amen.
This was written by Beth Moore and don't you suppose that she must be addressing the Church; the body of Christ?
It begs the question: if we can't love one another inside and outside our "walls", doesn't that make us a bunch of frauds?
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