With Me, Through Me

March 2, 2016 2 Comments

DaveWalkingI try to keep my prayers from “vain repetitions,” but I still find myself using certain phrases in my conversations with the Lord over and over again. One such phrase, “Lord, work with me and through me.” After having prayed this again just yesterday, I paused to reflect on what my words meant (I suppose trying to backpedal from it being a vain repetition).

I came to the conclusion that it’s a good phrase for me to pray, as long as I mean it when I pray it. Yes, I need to let God work with me before I can hope He will work through me in the lives of others. Sure, I’ve known this all along, but I also know I need to be reminded of this truth time and time again.

I can only share how God can be real and work in the life of someone else if I have experienced that in some measure in my own life first. I can’t give what I don’t have. What this means, then, is that if I have the goal of providing spiritual food for the souls of others I must first feed and nurture my own soul. Over my years of pastoral ministry I’ve had to resist the temptation to go off running in all directions to minister to people and rather move in His direction, allowing Him to minister to me first and to first transform me. Rushing off to others had to take second place to first resting in the Lord. My quiet times with the Lord helped me with the busy times of being with His people. “Yes, Lord, first work with me and then work through me. Amen.”

“Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.’” (Mark 6:31)

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Good Reminder

January 14, 2014 Leave a comment

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I know we all preach and teach this, but I know I sometimes have a more difficult time making application of the truth to my own life. I have found, though, that the people in my church who have helped me grow the most in the Lord are those with whom I don’t have a natural affinity or with whom I have had conflict. My faith in the Lord has also grown more by grappling with and accepting answers to my prayers that have disappointed rather than delighted.

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An Old Prayer for Today

August 8, 2012 3 Comments

Here’s a portion of a prayer from The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal. Scougal was born in 1650, exactly 300 years before me! I came across him when reading John Piper, who wrote that Scougal had a profound influence on him. I ordered Scougal’s book (you’d never find it on the shelf at a local bookstore). Come to find out Susanna Wesley was highly influenced by Scougal and commended him to her two sons. Whitefield also was impacted by him. And to think I had never heard of him. OK, so here’s the portion of a prayer of his I promised.

“O God, grant that the consideration of what thou art, and what we ourselves are, may both humble and lay us low before thee and also stir up in us the strongest and most ardent aspirations towards thee! We desire to resign and give up ourselves to the conduct of thy Holy Spirit… Amen” (p. 95)

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