MY PRAYER TODAY 3-10-12 (very personal, hopefully inspiring to someone)

Lord, I deeply desire the very best You wish to give me. I want to live at the top of the life You have planned.

There are times You give me eloquence and lofty insight; sometimes You even let me sing loudly and boldly. But please don’t let me miss loving, or else I am just so much noise.

Lord, I have seen You work in my life; I have experienced supernatural living, and understanding which could only come from You. I have seen You move mountains; I have moved mountains because I believe in You. I can do anything through You. And—You have taught me how to love. Thank You. I humbly beg of You to let me love again. Without Your love in me and through me, all this other high and mighty stuff is nothing.

You have led me to care about people in all kinds of need, and You have arranged my life to be available to help in unusual times and circumstances. Often the rest of my personal life looks like a wreck—worthless. Is that intentional, Lord, so You can teach me to love?

Did You really say I should suffer long, silently, and still be kind? Is that what love is? Can Your love teach me to not think about how much more other people have—including how much more they think I should have? Lord, with love, let me not be a brag or brash or have to be right.

Let love so fill me that there will be nothing inappropriate in my life, seen or unseen. May love direct me to the welfare of others, not my own. With Your love in me, help me rise above the aggravations of others and the evils all around trying to occupy my thoughts.

With love I do not delight in sin, or wrongs done to me, or gossip. I think and get excited about the truth. Love filters out bad stuff, and lets only good enter the mind. (I use this list for testing thoughts—true, honest, promote justice, pure, lovely, produce a good report card, inspire virtue, worthy of praise.)

Lord, help me love enough to carry someone’s burdens.
Lord, help me love enough to believe in someone through tough times.
Lord, help me love enough to keep hope alive, for my life and for someone else.
Lord, help me love enough to hang in there when my strength is gone, but Yours is not.

I see a lot of things fail. Lord, thank You for showing me love, and giving me love, that does not fail. Everything else will disappear—explaining things, speaking of supernatural, understanding mysteries—it will all be gone.
Lord, thank You that I do not have to know it all, to love.

A few side notes, to put love in perspective:

I know and understand some things now—but it is so incomplete.
I can even explain some things now, for others’ benefit—but it is so incomplete.
Someday, Someone is coming—“incomplete” will be history.
I can see progress from my childhood to adulthood—in my speaking, in my understanding, in my thinking—thank God I grew up.

Likewise, imagine the difference between now and heaven:
Life is a smudgy mirror—we can’t even get an accurate view of ourselves.
In heaven, we’ll see Jesus, face to face, and we’ll look like Him, just like we’re supposed to. PERFECT LOVE—PERFECT MIRROR.
And our thinking will be perfect too. We’ll think like God. Imagine that.

FAITH really matters now, FAITH to get us through this life, FAITH to do great and small things for God and others, FAITH to get us to heaven, believing in the blood of Jesus.
HOPE really matters now, HOPE to keep us going, HOPE to keep our eyes on the prize ahead.
LOVE really matters now, to show the LOVE of Jesus in our life. His LOVE alone makes our LOVE count.

So, we need faith and hope and love now.
But only one is the greatest, even now.
And only one will be in heaven.

L O V E

Lord, thank You for loving me, thank You for teaching me how to love, and thank You for the blessed opportunity to love. I humbly ask You to let me love again. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

If you like, you can see this is a phrase by phrase parallel with I Corinthians 12:31-13:13 from His Book.

(No blog tomorrow—A personal day of memory for me)