Friday, June 23, 2006

Today, I will post a prayer written by John Piper from his book, Seeking and Savoring Jesus Christ, pages 90-92. May this be the prayer of your heart.

O Father, how I need mercy. I sin every day. I fall short of your command to love you with all my heart and soul and mind and strength. I am lukewarm in my affections. All my motives, even at their best, are mixed. I murmur. I am anxious about tomorrow. I get angry too quickly. I desire what ought not be desired.
I get irritated at the very attitudes in others that I myself displayed five minutes before. If you do not show mercy to me, I am undone. O God, let me see the mercy of Christ and savor it for what it is. Grant me power to comprehend his love. Incline me to read and ponder the stories of the mercy of Jesus in the Gospels. Let me so admire what he did that I imitate him. But let it be much more than external imitation. Let it come from the heart where I have been broken for my sin and where I have come to cherish mercy and live by mercy and hope in mercy and long for mercy. Make the mercy of Jesus the greatest beauty of the Savior in my eyes. Let me behold, and beholding, become like him. And bend this taste for mercy outward so that I show it. Make me full of his mercy that I might show mercy. Fulfiill in me the command to do justice and love mercy. Let me love showing mercy. Make it so much a part of me that it is who I am. So unite me to Christ that his mercy is my mercy, and my mercy is a presenting of Christ. He is all I have to give in the end. Glorify his mercy, Father, in my faith and in my patience. Thank you, oh thank you, for Christ and your mercy to me in him. In his name I pray, amen.
John Piper
Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ

See you Monday!Rejoice always, pray without ceasing!(1 Thessalonians 5:17)
pp. 90-92

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