God, please give us the grace to overcome our distractions and occupations. We want to be preoccupied with You. We want to be occupied by You.
I want to be at ease and at rest with You, reclining as Your beloved disciple on Your chest. I want to be at work for You, with You. Please release freedom over Your church here: freedom from our busyness and routines; freedom to rest with You; freedom to stop, wait and listen. Freedom to STOP. Freedom to slow down. Give us the grace to to wait upon You. To wait expectantly without distraction. We are failing, please help us. Help us, by Your grace, to live lives of adoration not busyness; lives of obedience and sacrifice not self-centeredness. Please show us how. Show us the way and give us the strength to alter our course and to change.
Merciful Savior, deliver us from what drives us. Father, please deliver Your men from all the things we are driven by. Lord, our lives are driven by things that are not of You. We are driven by lusts and fears and selfish passions and delusions and woundedness and insecurity and pride. God, heal us and deliver us that we may be driven by Your Spirit; by Your heart, by a singular passion and desire to please You and to be like You. That we may be driven by true love and obedience... by the cross and the nails that are driven there.
Cast down the idols, Father - give us the grace to cast them down in each of our lives by the Blood of Jesus and the cross of Christ. Cast down the idols of self, of distraction and entertainment, and of the approval of men. Purify us. Purify our passions and our purposes. Purify our motives and our ministries. Purify Your Bride.
We have become like addicts, Father, strung out on this culture. We believed the lie. We have been seduced by its offers of ecstasy and escape. Even though we are now seeing its deception and understanding that it is a lie and death, we are hooked. Oh, God, please deliver us. Take us through detox. Cleanse us. Cut us off from our addictions, from this culture and this corruption. Purify us. Rehabilitate us that we might live. May we no longer be numb and dull and detached. Bring us back to life from this stupor of addiction. We want to go clean from this culture. We want to return to You from this rebellion, from this slow death on the streets and alleys outside Your dwelling place. We want to come home, Father. This generation, God, Your children, Your church, Your Bride: clean and sober.
Deliver us, God, that Your glory could be evident to the world. For Your Kingdom, for Your honor - that You may be high and lifted up among all creation.
Take these lives and cease them from meaninglessness and craft each one into something meaningful to You. Take our lives - our hearts, our affections, our time - and purge them of all that is futile. Fill them with what is meaningful and valuable to You. May our time, both active and waiting, be filled... be consumed by things of eternal worth. You are our Redeemer. Amen.
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