A Prayer

Father,

You have made it clear that what You have established is a religion of grace. In every respect, our relationship with You is based on grace. You couldn’t have made that any clearer.

But we have been misled. We have been told that if our lives are going to succeed, we will need to work at it. And if things aren't working well, that what we need to do is simply try harder. And while it may be that no one ever quite said it this way, the message that we have heard is that it all depends on us. Success or failure is in our hands. And that we had better do whatever is necessary so that we will succeed.

Father, in our saner moments we know that such thinking is wrong. But, Father, it's hard to get rid of that way of thinking. It has been impressed not just upon our minds but also upon our hearts. And so, we find ourselves trying to live based on our own abilities.

Father, we do pray about the different parts of life, asking for Your grace. But there are too many times when it becomes clear to us that we are still depending on ourselves. We see that when life really isn't working very well, when the anxiety levels have grown, when we’ve gotten stressed out. That’s when it becomes clear that our grasp of Your grace isn’t as solid as it needs to be.

Father, this is not good. For one thing, living this way just doesn't work. But worse than that, living this way dishonors You. And we really don't want to do that.

And so, Father, we look to You, the God of all grace. Rescue us from our sins, from our sinful thinking which leads to sinful living. Renew our minds so that our hearts will understand how life actually works. Make us depend on Your grace so that even as we do the hard work of living well we are doing that by putting our hope in Your grace and not in our efforts.

We ask for this, Father, so that our lives will function in the way that they are supposed to. We ask for this so that we will make You, our very gracious God, look as good as You actually are. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.