Author: Benjamin

Jesus, you are the source of everything. Everything in the universe is held together by the same power that raised you from the dead…the same power that works in me; the power that makes me even able to want to do your will. Before I knew you, I had no sense of the pure and perfect love that God is. Now that I know, help me never to forget it! Because I did forget once…and I never want to walk down that path again. I would’ve died there, but for your grace which followed me, and hovered over me, and then picked me up and restored me once I had been worn all the way down to nothing by the sin and the shame.

Jesus, I choose to focus as purely on you as I have the ability to do, and I rely on you for the rest. There is still much in me that is lacking, but I know that you will be faithful to complete the work that you have started.

My flesh is afraid, though, as it dies. My mind is a tangle of bloody half-chopped-off tentacles, striving and straining to grab onto what they think will keep them safe. Let it all fall away now as I focus on the One who created time. You have promised, and you are not like a human; lying is not something that you have the capacity to do. Why are you worried, oh my soul? Look at who is here with you! It is Jesus, the very God of the universe! Lay yourself to rest in His arms. Be not overwhelmed with the fear and the sorrow. The kingdom is being born in you, and it hurts, I know, but take heart and know that your Redeemer lives, and He is on your side against all that would destroy you. Nothing can separate you from His love. Know that.

Jesus, I find myself terrified at the thought that another human being could have the ability to make me feel alive like never before. This terror exists because I have known what it is to have found that kind of happiness in this world, and then to experience the pain of losing it. There is no other pain quite like this kind of living death. As a consequence, I am wanting only to find that kind of love in you, the only true source of lasting fulfillment. I am wanting to only find it there, but then here comes my actual human heart, deciding things on its own…

But, Jesus, you said “It is not good that man should be alone.” And you said this about a man who had full access to enjoy fellowship and communion with you, yourself, at all times, at a time before this access was broken through the Fall. Does this not clearly indicate that there is, in fact, a type of loneliness that is a part of even the fully regenerated human condition? And doesn’t this story tell us that it is your heart’s desire to see this need met by providing a perfectly suited companion to each of us?

But, Lord, I am so scared. I ask you to comfort me. I ask you to guide me, and to give me the strength and the wisdom to submit to your guidance in all things. All things, Lord. Let me not succumb to the enemy’s whispering promises of satisfaction through compromise. Let me be only a bastion of humble submission and peace. Let me adhere only to you as my absolute source of peace and security. I ask you to heal the parts of my soul that have been wounded in this specific way. The wounds, they cause me to have a particular type of desperation for human relationship…a type of desperation that can only be legitimately directed towards your love, Jesus. Everything else must come second. You must be the first and the last, by virtue of the pure and simple fact that you are the first and the last. So, God, please allow me the grace this day to line up with what is, that I may be properly able to receive your blessing in all its forms, no matter what you have decided that will look like.

Here and now, I choose to deliberately engage with the present moment by forgetting the things which are behind me, and pressing forward into the fabric and substance of everything you are doing in my life, Jesus. I choose you. Above and beyond all else, I choose you.

I lay aside everything which hinders me. All sin and distraction, I lay it down for t his one purpose only: that I may experience the quietness that is necessary to hear your voice. Your voice is everything to me now, Jesus. Help me to not be afraid. Help me to know you are love. Even the parts of me that are yet traumatized, and reacting in pain, seeing the present through that old, awful filter…help me to see and to know with everything in me that you are love. Help me to understand enough of what love is, that I might not be afraid any longer.

My words of thanks seem so small, and your wonderful gifts are so impossibly great, but thank you so much for what you are doing, Jesus. May I decrease, that you might increase. Amen.

Jesus, help me to look to you first in all things. Humanity is a fickle mistress, and I’ve been burned all the way dead so many times in that fire. It is my natural tendency to rely on people for the love that you made me to need, but I wasn’t made to receive it from them…

Or wait. Was I?

You said, “It is not good that man should be alone.”

What does that mean? What does that mean for me right now?

Jesus, I want you to be first and foremost in my life. This has not been my habit. I have relied on the acceptance of others for the support of my mental wellbeing, and I have done it in a way that is very unhealthy. It has been all I’ve ever known to do, and you want to heal this. You want my relationships with others to be healthy, and not like a drug. I have used them like drugs. I have used people like drugs.

I open myself to you today, Lord. I ask you to guide me in this healing, and to protect my heart during the process. You know me. You know my needs, and you care about them. I give myself to to again all over today, and I choose to trust you with everything.

Once more you have rescued me from myself. Nothing is too much for you. No one snatches me out of your hand. I see that again now, like it’s for the first time, all over again.

And I’m falling in love with you again.

You are the very incarnation of the intelligent love behind the universe. You are the force which binds this place together. Without you, there would be chaos — literal, absolute chaos. What could blind a rational human mind from seeing this?

That is one of the questions.

My life has been full of said blinding, and of questions upon questions, but you have somehow always been there, too. I find myself suddenly and incredibly more aware of you now, because of your faithfulness. Because of your unending love.

Father, I can hear the enemy’s voice. It is so loud. It speaks of how I’ve been wronged, and how I should be working to vindicate myself. Jesus, you did none of this when you were here, working to initiate the ultimate correction of this broken world. People abused you, and you endured it. You left it all in the Father’s hands.

Help me to ignore that voice, Lord. Help me to focus on what I am supposed to be doing. Help me to remember who and what we are together. Help me to choose only Your will, and not my own, and help me to discern correctly in all of this.

Jesus, I start this day feeling lost and alone, confident only in my own insufficiency and insignificance. Even so, I realize that these convictions are a result of my hearing the voice of the enemy. That is not your voice, and I will not follow it. You speak blessing over me. You sing with joy over me. You encourage me with prophecies of better days to come. Help me to hear you, Lord, and let the enemy of my soul and all his deceptions fade away, until I don’t even feel that stuff anymore. I know I can’t do this on my own. I repent for having tried.

I am beginning to see what could be the glimmerings of good things to come. I am afraid, though. Afraid to trust, afraid to let go. I do believe, and my mustard seed of faith has brought me into incredible places in the past…help me to continue in that pattern. Help me to not give ear to the enemy’s lies. Jesus, you know me. You know everything about me. That one time when you told Peter that the enemy had desired to sift him as wheat…I completely identify with that whole entire situation.

What am I trying to say?

We have just come through a season of absolute loss and pain. You have walked through much of it with me, and you have carried me through the rest. It was worse than I could ever hope to be able to use words to describe, and it’s still not quite over. Now I find myself unable to consider the possibility of future blessing without also anticipating that these blessings will then be destroyed at some point, and cause this kind of pain all over again.

I would like to think that these anticipations do not reflect an accurate understanding of what the truth really is. There are versions of the truth, though, which do ascribe to such a view, and I have some of these versions still bouncing around inside…these poisonous narratives echoing still, within chambers of my mind that may yet be locked.

The whole thing is a problem.

Jesus, I give it all to you right now.  I choose to lay down my cares, fears, hopes, desires, and everything else right here at the foot of the cross. I give you my burdens. I give you my dreams. I give you everything that I have inside me that I can possibly offer you, and in exchange I receive your peace, your comfort, your wisdom, your counsel, and your faith. I receive the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I acknowledge that my own handle on this faith has not been the best. The enemy has been able to steal the word from me in all kinds of ways, and right now I acknowledge my failings. I confess them to you as I draw upon your endless reservoir of all things good.  I connect fully with you, right here in this moment, and I give you the sacrifice of praise, even though I may not feel like it.

I refuse fear. I refuse doubt. They are active, conscious entities which vie for my soul, and I deny and renounce all fellowship with them, here and now – and forever.

Thank you, God, that these things are possible and freely given, despite anything else. Thank you that what you have done for us constitutes the highest truth. Thank you that you have blotted out what was written against us.

Help me to live in this kind of gratitude, no matter what. Help me to heal in this way.

Jesus, I bring you all of this pain. I bring you all of my pride. I bring you all of the stuff that seems to make me walk away sad on the inside, like the rich young ruler in the story…I bring you all of that garbage. I recognize it as just precisely that. It is waste, and it leads to more waste, and the whole entire thing I am trying to avoid here is waste…wasting what you intended to make, by squandering myself on that which is not eternal.

You are my everything. Help me to see that. Help me to not care about the things this world says to me when I am at my weakest points. It knows just exactly how to get me right where it counts, but greater are you, and you are alive in me. Help me to see that. Help me to know it more every day.

Show me your love again, Jesus. Show it to me in everything I see and hear. Let it ring from every sound. Let it shine from everything. Let it fill my mind and heart. Let there be no denying it, for I am weak and foolish on my own, without you.

But I am not without you anymore. Let that sink in.

Suddenly (like it always seems to happen) I am painfully aware of how good God really is, and of how available He has made all of Himself to me, through Christ. We all have this access — heaven is wide open now, in this season — but it’s like…if someone is giving you something, and you don’t really believe it’s there, you won’t actually take it. And so, you won’t have it.

All my life, I’ve had a hard time believing it’s actually there…this wonderful gift of all that He is. And now that is changing. Now, in this time, I am waking up. It has come at a crazy high price, but it has now come for real, and I am never letting it go.