“…Oh what peace we often forfeit,
Oh what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry,
Everything to God in prayer…”
“…Oh to grace, how great a debtor,
daily I’m constrained to be.
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to Thee…”
Of all Your attributes Father, which is the greatest?
In our small and humble state, how could we judge?... or comprehend?
But oh how wonderful is Your graciousness and Your extending it to us.
It predisposes You to look on us, in all our preoccupation with ourselves, with an undeserved desire to bless, out of which is available to us and freely given, loving kindness, comfort and the hemming us in, behind and in front, that is not imprisonment but is protectiveness.
Your graciousness and grace has been towards us from the beginning and our first failings… and continues through all of our times to now and will until You wrap things up.
It is because You are so that we have still been allowed to continue in our existence before You and what has enabled us to endure through trials, temptations and failures.
Through it all we question, “Why”?
Through it all we are prone to wander.
In Your unfailing attention and attentiveness…
Your eye sees me,
Your ear hears me,
Your heart and mind knows even my secret places and true motives,
You are focused on me…
on each one of us… individually,
with overarching benevolence.
Oh…the unsearchable goodness…
How gracious Father.
We pray to You who extends to us grace…
There is no other to whom we can… or would… go…
No other who is like You, who is able, and who extends grace…
offering the avenue of prayer…
permitted access and nearness to You…
By which we enter in and leave …
with enabling power to endure the circumstances in which we find ourselves…
in the moment…
with perfect peace and hope and joy.
And just as You have extended grace towards us…
may we too extend grace towards one another.
Father… You are so good.
Teach us love.
Enable us to love.
May we be Your beloved.
May You be ours.
In Yeshua’s name we pray.
Amen.
“What a Friend We Have in Jesus” Joseph M. Scriven (1855)
“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” Robert Robinson (1758),
Concept of “hemmed in as protection, not imprisonment” from sermon “He Knows All About Me” Alstair Begg
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