A Prayer

Father,

You have given us many good gifts; many good gifts. Right now, we want to mention just one in particular. We want to thank you for the Bible. Everything we need to know about how to live well is, in one way or another, contained in its pages; everything. Some of what it teaches is presented as explicit commands. Other things are taught by the examples of the saints and the wicked who are written about. But there is also much to learn by simply considering the assumptions that the Bible makes about all sorts of things. There is wisdom there that will keep us safe as we travel through this life with its many dangers. We are grateful, Father, for this gift.

But having the wisdom for living available to us in this book and actually possessing that wisdom are not the same thing. There is so much that the Scriptures contain that we are completely ignorant of. And that makes a difference when it comes to our being able to live well. Some of this is not known to us because it isn't known by anyone. Your Church is still growing in its understanding of the truths of the Scriptures, a process that has been going on for millennia. There are other truths that your Church, at one point, discovered and learned well. But for whatever reason, those truths have been neglected and are forgotten. They need to be re-discovered. There is, however, plenty that can be readily known by us. We ask, Father, that you would bless the ministry of this church so that those truths would be clearly taught here and, as a result, would be clearly learned.

We ask for this, Father, for a simple reason. We need to become wiser than what we are. There are many facts that we already know. But what good is such knowledge without sufficient skill to use it well? We need more wisdom. We know that as we do grow in this wisdom we will see life differently. We will see reality more clearly. And when that happens we will be able to live better than we do now, something that will reveal the beauty of who You are to all of us here and then to the world around us.

So, Father, make us people of Your Book so that we would love it, know it and live it. And all this for Your glory. Through Christ our Lord Amen.